Deploying a simple Sinatra rack application under Apache and Phusion Passenger turned out not work out of the box for me.

I already had a virtual host so I decided to deploy with passengers sub URI (sub URI documentation).

To make this work you’ll need Apache installed with Phusion Passenger setup (Passenger installation)

This is what I started with

This is my folders for the already existing website.

[cc lang="bash"]
# Existing homedir
/home/my_web/
# Current webroot
/home/my_web/htdocs
[/cc]

Creating folders and files for Sinatra

The first thing you want to do is to create folders and files for Sinatra.

[cc lang=bash]
mkdir /home/my_web/sinatra
[/cc]

[cc lang=bash]
cd /home/my_web/sinatra
mkdir tmp
mkdir logs
mkdir public
touch app.rb
touch config.ru
[/cc]

Create symlink

Create a symbolic link from our current webroot to the new Sinatra app so that apache/passenger can find it.

[cc lang="bash"]
ln -s /home/my_web/sinatra/public /home/my_web/htdocs/app
[/cc]

Creating the application

We also need a Sinatra application for this to work so lets fill those files.

File: config.ru

[cc lang="ruby"]
require ‘app’

set :environment, ENV['RACK_ENV'].to_sym
set :app_file, ‘app.rb’
disable :run

log = File.new(“logs/sinatra.log”, “a”)
STDOUT.reopen(log)
STDERR.reopen(log)

run Sinatra::Application
[/cc]

File: app.rb

[cc lang="ruby"]
require ‘rubygems’
require ’sinatra’

before do
# Strip the last / from the path
request.env['PATH_INFO'].gsub!(/\/$/, ”)
end

get ” do
“Hello world”
end
[/cc]

Apache configuration

Now we need to setup apache so that it can find our Sinatra app and load it.

The only thing you need to do is add the following line to your existing VirtualHost block:
[cc lang="apache"]
RackBaseURI /app
[/cc]
This line will tell passenger to look into our existing webroot for a symlink thats named app and which points to our rack app. (RackBaseURI documentation)

Virtual host entry

[cc lang="apache"]

ServerName www.example.com
ServerAlias example.com
DocumentRoot /home/my_web/htdocs/
RackBaseURI /app

Order allow,deny
Allow from all
AllowOverride All


[/cc]

The best part is that you are allowed to specify this option multiple times. So you can easily setup multiple apps under the same virtual host.

Cheers!

I have googled for a solution but all solutions I found where pretty ugly so i decided to create my own. When writing this line I did a test googling just to give an example of a bad example and my first result where the buckblogs blog. A post about a plugin called multistage I do not how I could miss that

But as my solution is so simple I will continue this post and show you anyway.

As usual I have written to much bullshit and I guess that you just want is some code so here you go.

[cc lang="ruby"]
desc “Run tasks in production enviroment.”
task :production do
# Production nodes
role :app, “192.168.1.30″
role :app, “192.168.2.30″
role :db, “192.168.1.30″, :primary => true
end

desc “Run tasks in staging enviroment.”
task :staging do
# Staging nodes
role :web, “192.168.1.60″
role :app, “192.168.2.60″
role :db, “192.168.1.60″, :primary=>true
end
[/cc]

This is all there is to it. Splitting your role definitions into different tasks.
Now you may wonder how you use this when deploying or whatever you do.

Just add those tasks as params to cap.

[cc lang="bash"]
cap staging deploy:check
cap staging deploy
# or
cap production deploy:check
cap production deploy
[/cc]

And here is a little bonus

Just to spice this up a bit I added another useful function. A little warning if you are about to deploy to your production environment. When running a big/important site you do not want to deploy into the wrong environment

This is how the final code looks.

[cc lang="ruby"]
desc “Run tasks in production enviroment.”
task :production do
# Prompt to make really sure we want to deploy into prouction
puts “\n\e[0;31m ######################################################################"
puts " #\n # Are you REALLY sure you want to deploy to production?"
puts " #\n # Enter y/N + enter to continue\n #"
puts " ######################################################################\e[0m\n"
proceed = STDIN.gets[0..0] rescue nil
exit unless proceed == ‘y’ || proceed == ‘Y’

# Production nodes
role :app, “192.168.1.30″
role :app, “192.168.2.30″
role :db, “192.168.1.30″, :primary => true
end

desc “Run tasks in staging enviroment.”
task :staging do
# Staging nodes
role :web, “192.168.1.60″
role :app, “192.168.2.60″
role :db, “192.168.1.60″, :primary=>true
end
[/cc]

When this code is used you will get something like the image below.

And thats all there is to it. The only thing that I think is missing is a warning/notice if you do not specify either production/staging. Like it is now you will get an error when capistrano cannot find any valid servers.

Happy deploying!