Posted by
Shane – January 20, 2009
Slicehost has some really nice tutorials and instructions for setting up a Linux server to get a website up and running. I just followed the tutorial for setting up a Ruby on Rails site being server by Apache using Passenger. If this sounds like a foreign language, well the names for software in the FOSS world can be a bit confusing but once involved in the process they become more familiar.
There are four basic steps that I followed:
1. Install and configure the server’s operating system (parts 1 & 2, Ubuntu 8.10 (aka Intrepid Ibex)
2. Install Ruby, Ruby Gems and Rails
3. Install Apache and Passenger and configure them to serve up a Rails site.
4. Make a website
Not too difficult, well, except for step #4! Ha! All told, the entire process takes about an hour (most of that spent downloading, installing and updating the software).
Posted by
Shane – July 28, 2008
I have been toying with a MySQL server at work for loading data from a legacy database and creating user accounts in Microsoft’s Active Directory. I am using linux along with MySQL, Ruby and the Rails framework. While I am certainly no über-expert at this, I am finding the task not only manageable, but altogether pleasant. My current workflow looks like this:
- Mount Windows share using Samba
- Load data into MySQL and perform a bunch of transformations on it
- TODO: script creation of Active Directory accounts from MySQL Database (Python??)
I found that I needed to view the data as I was testing the MySQL transformations, so I turned to Ruby and Rails. I have not had a great deal of luck in the past with configuring Apache to serve up dynamic content via Mongrel or lighty, so I decided to give Passenger a go. For those of you that are unaware, Passenger works directly with Apache and requires almost no configuration. It is dead simple to use. So, within a matter of minutes (minus the time to tweak my database to conform to the Rails conventions) I had a web site up and running to display my data as I was testing it!
Open Source Software is becoming (for me at least) a more viable solution to the problems I face than the proprietary alternatives. The wealth of information available and the relative ease with which a great deal of work can be done is amazing.
Posted by
Shane – March 21, 2007
After much frustration, I think I finally have a working installation recipe for RubyOnRails on Debian Linux.
- Install Debian
- Install ssh and sudo
apt-get install ssh sudo
- Remove “root” login from ssh config file
- Create a “source” directory
cd /
mkdir source
- Install tools for compiling from various sources
apt-get install gcc gcc-3.4-doc gcc-3.4 g++-3.4 make libc6-dev flex openssl curl wget zlib1g-dev libzlib-ruby
- Download latest Ruby (1.8.5 as of this entry), unpack and install
cd /source
wget http://ftp.ruby-lang.org/pub/ruby/1.8/ruby-1.8.5-p2.tar.gz
tar xzvf ruby-1.8.5-p2.tar.gz
cd ruby-1.8.5
./configure
make
make install
cd ..
- Download, unpack, compile and install zlib (not included in testing version of Ruby?)
wget http://www.blue.sky.or.jp/atelier/ruby/ruby-zlib-0.6.0.tar.gz
tar xzvf ruby-zlib-0.6.0.tar.gz
cd ruby-zlib-0.6.0
ruby extconf.rb
make
make install
cd ..
- Download, unpack, compile and install Ruby Gems (0.9.2 as of this entry)
cd /source/
wget http://rubyforge.org/frs/download.php/17190/rubygems-0.9.2.tgz
tar xzvf rubygems-0.9.2.tgz
cd rubygems-0.9.2
ruby setup.rb
- Install Rails
gem install rails --include-dependencies
- Install Mongrel
gem install mongrel mongrel_cluster --include-dependencies
- Create a dummy application
cd ~/
rails test
mongrel_rails start
- Go to http://your.ip.address:3000/ to see if it works
Sources
Posted by
Shane – March 7, 2007
It may just be me, but it seems as though Linux has been in the news with increasing frequency. It seems like a giant snowball is beginning to form and may have the potential to be a serious game changer. With the upgrade to Vista looming in a dark corner for most organizations, it seems like once passed over alternatives are looking considerably more viable. As one who works in the IT industry, I am all for it! While I don’t dislike Microsoft’s Windows XP operating system, it is definitely lacking. The next version of Microsoft’s operating system, entitled Vista does offer some new features, but it is a fear of the unknown security flaws that makes me less than enthusiastic about it. Being a complete Linux noob, I have quite a few questions and concerns, most of them concerning integrating Linux into our existing server environment. I am sure that these questions all have answers, I just don’t know them yet!
Posted by
Shane – June 28, 2006
So, I installed Ubuntu Linux on a laptop and I am posting to my very own weblog from Firefox which is running in Ubuntu Linux. I have to admit that the installation was seemless, and the GUI looks very nice. I am definitely intrigued!
