Zownir Enterprises

I’ve created a shell script to build a complete Ruby on Rails stack (application environment) on WebFaction. Although written with WebFaction users in mind, apart from a few minor details, the script is actually generally applicable. All you have to do is edit a few variable assignments (install path, rails app name, and service ports) at the beginning of the script and execute. In less than 20 minutes, your rails app will be up and running with nginx reverse proxying (and fair load balancing) to a pair of thin servers and with monit keeping watch.

In case you’re unfamiliar with thin, it’s the likely successor to mongrel. It uses mongrel’s excellent http parser, provides various overall enhancements, and offers a number of features mongrel lacks. I specifically chose to use thin on WebFaction because of its support for unix socket listeners. For more technical information, see the comments in the script and the accompanying README.markdown file.

What you get:

• Ruby
• RubyGems
• Gems: rails, merb, mongrel, mongrel_cluster, thin, capistrano, termios, ferret, acts_as_ferret, god, sqlite3-ruby, mysql, and typo
• Git
• Nginx (with nginx-upstream-fair third party module)
• Monit
• Startup scripts and working default configuration files for nginx and monit

I will try to keep this script reasonably up to date at GitHub. Last updated July 21, 2008.

Get it from GitHub