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
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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!