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Archived

2008-01-07T15:56:00Z

It looks like Zed has been sending some traffic this way. Unfortunately, I don’t blog here anymore. For Rails stuff, check out the Rails Machine Blog. For personal stuff, Azilia: Bird Dogs and Honky Tonk.

Adios.

Neglect

2007-06-18T20:17:00Z

After months of neglect, I finally updated this thing to Mephisto. Hopefully, it will stop the server crashes by banishing Typo!

Migration

2006-07-10T09:49:50Z

This blog is now running on my personal Rails Machine. I’ve also updated to the latest Typo trunk to fix The Great Typo Memory Leak of 2006.

Welcome

2006-06-16T11:34:17Z

... to the machine.

Rails site now using Mongrel with mongrel_cluster

2006-06-12T01:35:26Z

The Ruby On Rails site received a stack overhaul and is now running Apache 2.2 and Mongrel with mongrel_cluster. We will be offering this same stack with Rails Machine which should be ready any day now.

One of these days I need to migrate this site!

Apache for static and Mongrel for Rails (with mod_deflate and Capistrano support)

2006-05-19T21:33:00Z

Here’s an Apache 2.2 conf for delegating requests for static files to Apache and Rails requests to Mongrel. Output from Apache and Mongrel will be compressed with mod_deflate. Support for Capistrano’s disable_web task and directory structure is also in there. You need mod_proxy_balancer, mod_rewrite, and mod_deflate loaded.

It still needs a little tweaking and review, but this should get y’all started. Something similar to this will be included in our deployment RubyGem that will ship with Rails Machine in the next few weeks (almost there!).

<virtualhost>
  ServerName yourdomain.com
  DocumentRoot /var/apps/your_app/current/public

  <directory>
    Options FollowSymLinks
    AllowOverride None
    Order allow,deny
    Allow from all
  </directory>

  # Configure mongrel_cluster 
  <proxy />
    BalancerMember http://127.0.0.1:8000
    BalancerMember http://127.0.0.1:8001
    BalancerMember http://127.0.0.1:8002
    BalancerMember http://127.0.0.1:8003
    BalancerMember http://127.0.0.1:8004
    BalancerMember http://127.0.0.1:8005
  </proxy>

  RewriteEngine On

  # Uncomment for rewrite debugging 
  #RewriteLog logs/your_app_rewrite_log
  #RewriteLogLevel 9 

  # Check for maintenance file and redirect all requests
  RewriteCond %{DOCUMENT_ROOT}/system/maintenance.html -f
  RewriteCond %{SCRIPT_FILENAME} !maintenance.html
  RewriteRule ^.*$ /system/maintenance.html [L]

  # Rewrite index to check for static
  RewriteRule ^/$ /index.html [QSA] 

  # Rewrite to check for Rails cached page
  RewriteRule ^([^.]+)$ $1.html [QSA]

  # Redirect all non-static requests to cluster
  RewriteCond %{DOCUMENT_ROOT}/%{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
  RewriteRule ^/(.*)$ balancer://mongrel_cluster%{REQUEST_URI} [P,QSA,L]

  # Deflate
  AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/html text/plain text/xml
  BrowserMatch ^Mozilla/4 gzip-only-text/html
  BrowserMatch ^Mozilla/4\.0[678] no-gzip
  BrowserMatch \bMSIE !no-gzip !gzip-only-text/html

  # Uncomment for deflate debugging
  #DeflateFilterNote Input input_info
  #DeflateFilterNote Output output_info
  #DeflateFilterNote Ratio ratio_info
  #LogFormat '"%r" %{output_info}n/%{input_info}n (%{ratio_info}n%%)' deflate
  #CustomLog logs/your_app_deflate_log deflate

  ErrorLog logs/your_app_error_log
  CustomLog logs/your_access_log combined
</virtualhost>

Please let me know how it works for you!

Zed on Mongrel and Rails

2006-05-18T17:27:31Z

Check out this interview with Zed Shaw on Mongrel and the future of Rails.

mongrel_cluster-0.1.1: the bird dog (capistrano support!)

2006-05-01T11:57:00Z

mongrel_cluster provides management tools for running Mongrel behind a reverse-proxy/load balancer. It is an extraction from Rails Machine, a deployment service and Ruby library that simplifies Rails application deployment. This release fixes bugs and adds a Capistrano task library.

Changes:

-changed pid file format to include port

-only write configuration options that are explicitly specified or required.

-removed some validation rules and delegate to mongrel_rails.

-added Capistrano task library.

Please rerun mongrel_rails cluster::configure to ensure smooth operation.

Capistrano Recipe

Add to config/deploy.rb:

require 'mongrel_cluster/recipes'

Example usage:

cap -a configure_mongrel_cluster

Variables

mongrel_servers: Number of Mongrel servers to start.
mongrel_port: Starting port to bind to.
mongrel_address: Address to bind to.
mongrel_environment: Rails environment to run as.
mongrel_config: Path to config file.
use_sudo: Whether or not tasks that can use sudo, ought to use sudo. Capistrano defaults to true.

Tasks (performed on :app role)

configure_mongrel_cluster: Configure the cluster with variables. Uses sudo if use_sudo is true.
start_mongrel_cluster: Start Mongrel processes on the app server. Uses sudo if use_sudo is true.
stop_mongrel_cluster: Stop the Mongrel processes on the app server. Uses sudo if use_sudo is true.
restart_mongrel_cluster: Restart the Mongrel processes on the app server. Uses sudo if use_sudo is true.
restart: Calls restart_mongrel_cluster to allow Mongrel to be used with the standard Capistrano deploy task.
spinner: Calls start_mongrel_cluster to allow Mongrel to be used with the standard Capistrano cold_deploy task.

Good luck and let me know how it works for ya!

Easy Mongrel Clustering with mongrel_cluster

2006-04-24T13:22:00Z

A quick note to announce the release of mongrel_cluster, a gem_plugin for the Mongrel web/application server. This plugin makes it easy to manage multiple Mongrel processes behind a reverse-proxy server and load balancer such as Pound, Balance, Lighttpd, or Apache.

This is the first of many release to support simplified Ruby on Rails application deployment using Rails Machine.

Setup

To get started, install the gem:

sudo gem install mongrel_cluster

Configure the cluster and generate a configuration file. This will run 2 mongrel processes on port 8000 and 8001 using “production” environment :

cd /path/to/my/rad/app
mongrel_rails cluster::configure -p 8000 -e production -a 127.0.0.1

With the configuration file written, you can easily start, stop, and restart the cluster. By default the file is written to config/mongrel_cluster.yml, but you can change the path with the “-C” option.

Start the cluster:

mongrel_rails cluster::start

Restart the cluster:

mongrel_rails cluster::restart

Stop the cluster:

mongrel_rails cluster::stop

Reverse proxy and load balancing

Pound is a reverse proxy, load balancer and HTTPS front-end. It is very easy to configure for use in front of a mongrel cluster.

Install Pound from source or packaging system of choice then edit your configuraton (most likely in /etc/pound/pound.conf).

Sample configuration for use with mongrel_cluster:

User "nobody" 
Group "nobody" 

ListenHTTP
  Address ip.address.goes.here
  Port 80

  Service
    Backend
      Address 127.0.0.1
      Port 8000
    End
    Backend
      Address 127.0.0.1
      Port 8001
    End
  End 
End

Start Pound:

sudo pound -f /etc/pound/pound.conf

So far in our testing for Rails Machine, this setup works well and its dead simple to setup and maintain. If you don’t want Mongrel to handle static files you could put lighttpd behind Pound and route requests for /images, /stylesheets, /javascript, and other specific paths. This will give you a performance boost on static files, but increase the complexity of your deployment. Your application may not need faster static file serving.

For information on using Mongrel behind Apache, read Scaling with Rails with Apache 2.2, mod_proxy_balancer and Mongrel.

Good luck!

In Vancouver

2006-04-13T00:13:29Z

Just made it to Vancouver for Canada on Rails by air, by sea, and by land. Check out the Flickr set and group.

Hostel in the Forest

2006-03-22T21:55:36Z

The Hostel in the Forest is up and running with a nice little site built in Rails. Fluxura is continuing its mission to help folks manage their own web sites using easy to use tools.

Canada on Rails

2006-03-22T15:51:55Z

Looks like I’m going to Canada on Rails. Drop me a line if you want to grab a beer! I love Vancouver. I’ve been twice before and its a great town to visit.

Evoca

2006-03-16T17:42:00Z

Evoca is a service for sharing voice recordings by a Savannah-based company. Really neat. Check it out.

Rails Machine News

2006-03-03T12:46:00Z

Just quick update on my latest adventure. Rails Machine has a sneak peek page up. Check out the movie on deploying a Rails application in 5 minutes.

We also got a nice mention on the Ruby on Rails weblog.

Monday Misc - SwithTower, Prototype and Rails STI

2006-02-20T17:18:00Z

Some development tidbits for the day…

- SwitchTower 1.0 is out. Includes extension libraries, new tasks, and set now accepts a block as argument. The restart_via variable has been changed to use_sudo which requires updating your deploy.rb.

- Snook has posted a Prototype desktop cheat sheet in various resolutions, sizes, and colors.

- If you use act_as_list in your ActiveRecord model with single table inheritance (STI), you can scope the list by type by calling acts_as_list without the scope argument in the super’s inherited class method:

class Category < ActiveRecord::Base 
  validates_presence_of :name

  def self.inherited(sub)
    sub.acts_as_list
  end
end

- When using STI, if you want to keep all of your subsclasses in the same source file as the super, add model :your_super_class to ApplicationController. This will prevent errors if Rails tries to load a subclass before your superclass.