it808.com

After yesterday’s post I realized that I only proved that the subdomain worked. I didn’t actually get rails running. So today I’m continuing.

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.

I have Wordpress as my domain root and when I tried to nest a rails app as a subfolder things didn’t work out. Instead I created a subdomain (i.e. test.mydomain.com), then I symlinked the rails_apps/public to the subdomain.

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