Gems

My gems are installed in my user folder:

INSTALLATION DIRECTORY:

• ~/.gem/ruby/1.8

GEM PATHS:

• ~/.gem/ruby/1.8
• /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8

In my public_html/sinatra_app/.htaccess

# Phusion Passenger Start
PassengerEnabled on
PassengerAppRoot ~/public_html/sinatra_app
RackBaseURI /sinatra_app
# Phusion Passenger End

My sinatra_app folder consists of

app.rb
config.ru
public/
tmp/

Getting my gems into the sinatra environment requires 2 lines in the config.ru file

ENV['GEM_HOME'] = '~/.gem/ruby/1.8'
ENV['GEM_PATH'] = '~/.gem/ruby/1.8:/usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8'

require 'rubygems'
require 'sinatra'
require 'app'
run Sinatra::Application

My app.rb looks like

get '/' do
  "Hello World #{Time.now.utc} #{params.inspect}"

end

A few days later I was writing a 2nd rails app and noticed a Wordpress 404 error whenever I asked for a route other than the root URL. I tried my original rails app and it was broken also. I hadn’t touched a thing.

After a chat session with Site5 support (awesome response), it wasn’t resolved. Their level 1 support said it was my .htaccess file, and provided no other help (poor response).

After opening a ticket myself and providing them my .htaccess, environment.rb and symlink they again said it was my .htaccess file, but this time it was my public_html .htaccess file that was wrong. But still no other url or hint.

Turns out my public_html .htaccess file has some wordpress rewrite rules in it. I needed to exclude the rails subdirectories so that wordpress wouldn’t see them.

Here’s what I added to my public_html .htaccess
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/rails_app_name/

Things were going well but I got stuck on the public key portion. The rest of this is what I did to complete the configuration:
Followed the steps in the github for adding public keys

My first problem was this error when I tried to git push

Permission denied (publickey).


I had to follow these steps to generate my public key correctly

ssh-agent /bin/bash
ssh-add (without the .pub)


Now I could push to github.

Internal Server Error

The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request.

Resolution:

This post in the Site 5 forums lists the correct folder and file permissions.

I set the permissions for wpremix folder to 755 and files to 644. Problem solved.

For themes, I selected the LiteJazz theme from rooplethemes.

Based on a co-worker’s experience and recommendation I signed the PTA up for Google Apps Standard Edition. I also reserved the domain name (.org and .com) for them. I learned that the Gmail part of Google Apps is top-notch. I had some hiccups with the Start page and Google Docs.

I also selected Drupal for their public and member’s only website. I also seriously considered Wordpress, because I saw several posts about using Wordpress as a CMS. After I got an idea of how many committees and people were involved, I decided that Drupal gives me the most flexibility in trying to meet each committees’ needs.

The current status is that I have about 25 Google Apps accounts created, but only a handful of people using it regularly. I setup email lists (aliases) that forward mail to individual accounts. I have configured the individual accounts to also send as the email alias. This configuration solved my dilemma of the PTA using co-chairs, meaning no one person was the “leader”. I didn’t want to configure a main committee account and have it forward to a secondary account. This would also not have solved the send as requirement. So I think the email alias is the right way to go.

Part II will discuss configuring Drupal and learning about which modules and themes I decided to implement.

1. Renamed public/index.html
2. Edit config/routes.rb to define a default route, I uncommented the welcome controller entry
3. Generated the welcome controller (ruby ./script/generate controller Welcome index)
4. Added this to the index method
   1. render :text => ‘Hello World’
5. Opened my browser and got this great error message:
   1. Rails application failed to start properly”

Now I thought, okay I didn’t create the DB yet. I also checked the logs and they were all 0.

I ended up using Site5’s SiteAdmin to create the DB. I discovered that my account doesn’t have create database rights through PhpMyAdmin or MySql command-line. Interesting, but no big deal (right now).

I tried to access the site again and got the same error. I thought about killing the cgi/fcgi processes, but I didn’t think I had started them yet. So I put the error into google and found this page: http://6brand.com/application-error-rails-app-failed-to-start-properly

I fired up my ssh connection and performed these commands:

• cd ~/myrailsapp
• chmod 755 public
• chmod 755 public/dispatch.fcgi
• chmod -R 775 log
• chmod -R 775 tmp

I tried the site again and viola, rails is up with the render :text message.

Next, I try some real functionality. Or maybe I’ll try a capistrano deploy to get that all worked out first. And I guess subversion too.

At site5 this boils down to the following steps:

1. Sign in to your SiteAdmin url
2.  Click Manage My Domains, Subdomains
3. Add the subdomain
4. ssh to your domain
5. cd ~
6. Create your rails app > rails myapp
7. Delete the subdomain directory created by SiteAdmin
   1. cd public_html
   2. rm -r subdomain
8. Create the symlink from your rail app/public to the subdomain
   1. cd ~
   2. ln -s ~/myapp/public/ ~/public_html/subdomain
9. Open your browser to http://subdomain.mydomain.com
   1. You should see the default index.html file for Rails

References:

http://www.hostingrails.com/forums/deployment_troubleshooting_thread/145