QWANtify is excited to announce, effective May 1, 2010, their purchase by Safe Bridge Solutions, Inc. of Madison, WI. Read More »

Second Post

April 16, 2007 · by Kevin Runde

Welcome my second rambling about using Ruby on Rails!

I have MySQL configured correctly now. It was very easy to do with the MySQL GUI Admin tool. Unfortunately the tool it’s self isn’t very stable. It would lock up a lot when viewing users. I’m afraid I may have to uninstall the Ubuntu install packages version and install it my self. Like I’ve had to do with Apache, Subversion, and RubyGems.

What’s that you say? Yes I did just say I had to manually install Apache and Subversion. It turns out Ubuntu only has Apache 2.0 available and not Apache 2.1 or 2.2. I’ve seen many posts about people complaining about it, but no sign from the Debian or Ubuntu people that they will do anything about it. So I had to go install it my self. OH this also broke SVN because I used Apache to access Subversion so then I had to download my own Subversion and build it my self. Turns out that was for the best too because again the Ubuntu version was 1.3 and the latest SVN is 1.4. So Ubuntu / Debian is on my naughty list right now. Still it is much easier to work with than any of the other distros so I would use it over any other Linux. Of course right now I am starting thing about buying a Mac Mini just to run as a server. ;-) If only Apple did cost so much. I just can justify spending that much on hardware when I can build a better box for less.

Luckily I found this one blog that has to articles on this. THIS talks about installing Apache 2.2. THIS talks about taking that Apache 2.2 and installing Subversion. I did have to do a few things different though. I use SSL so when I configured Apache I also had to do —enable-ssl. Also when I built Subversion I had to make sure I had the Development Files for Neon which I did use the Ubuntu Software Management tool to get. If you don’t do that then Subversion cannot access a repository over http or https. David Winter thank you for the two awesome articles and you are my new hero.

So why did I need Apache 2.2. Good question. After I got MySQL configured I tried to setup Mongrel Clusters. That was simple and easy thanks to RubyGems and the quality of Mongrel and Mongrel Cluster. Then I tried to load balance my Mongrel Cluster behind Apache. The suggested way to do that is use Mod Proxy Balancer, but that requries Apache 2.1 or Apache 2.2 and NOT Apache 2.0. Thus I spent another weekend to find this out and then going through manually building Apache 2.2 and Subversion.

Now though I can tell you all I have an awesome server stack. Apache using Mod Proxy Balancer talking to Mongrel Clusters. Why is this so cool. Well now I will automate my build using Capistrano.

I’ll save that for next time. ;-)

Filed in: Team Member Blog Comments (1)

Comments

#1 - Mark Neustadt said on Apr 26, 2007:
I feel your pain.  I have a VPS running CentOS4.4 and have been spending inordinate amounts of time trying to get my optimal Rails setup.  I have had to install and compile a lot of things by hand.  My latest nemesis is ImageMagick and RMagick.

Good luck.
Commenting is not available in this section entry.