Production setup with RVM + Nginx + Unicorn in Ubuntu

setup.md

Setup the RVM + Nginx + Unicorn in Ubuntu

---

Init by installing necessary linux headers

$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install build-essential vim git-core curl
$ sudo apt-get install libcurl4-openssl-dev libx11-dev libffi-dev tcl-dev tk-dev

Next install RVM

$ \curl -L https://get.rvm.io | bash -s

And add it to your .profile:

$ vim .profile
...

# Load RVM into a shell session *as a function*
[[ -s "$HOME/.rvm/scripts/rvm" ]] && source "$HOME/.rvm/scripts/rvm"

Run RVM Requirements:

$ rvm requirements

And install all the necessary sources that RVM needs.

Compile and Install Ruby

$ rvm install 2.0.0 # or another ruby version (1.9.2, 1.9.3)

Install Rails gem

$ gem install rails # current stable is 4.0.0

# for another versions run
$ gem install rails --version=3.2.13

Install Nginx (updated and stable)

First install dependecies for ppa repository:

$ sudo apt-get install python-software-properties

Then add the repository for apt-get, update the packages and install:

$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:nginx/stable
$ sudo apt-get update 
$ sudo apt-get install nginx

Remove the default site configuration from /etc/nginx/sites-available/default and /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default:

$ sudo rm -f /etc/nginx/sites-available/default /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default

Create a rails project with configuration files

For test purposes, create a rails project and add configuration files for nginx and unicorn:

$ rails new blog

Add unicorn to the Gemfile and bundle install it:

# Gemfile
gem 'unicorn'

$ bundle install

After the bundle completes gem install, create 2 configuration files:

# config/nginx.conf
upstream unicorn {
  server unix:/path/to/your/application/tmp/unicorn.blog.sock fail_timeout=0;
}

server {
	listen 80 default;
	root /path/to/your/application/public;
	
	keepalive_timeout 10;
	
	try_files $uri/index.html $uri @unicorn;
	location @unicorn {
		proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
		proxy_set_header Host $http_host;
		proxy_redirect off;
		proxy_pass http://unicorn;
	}
}

# config/unicorn.rb
root = "/path/to/your/app/"
working_directory root
pid "#{root}/tmp/pids/unicorn.pid"
stderr_path "#{root}/log/unicorn_error.log"
stdout_path "#{root}/log/unicorn_out.log"

listen "#{root}tmp/sockets/unicorn.sock"
worker_processes 4 
timeout 30

Symlink the config/nginx.conf to the sites-enabled folder on nginx configuration path:

$ sudo ln -s /path/to/your/application/config/nginx.conf /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/blog

WebServer restart

Now that configuration is set, restart Nginx:

$ sudo service nginx restart
 * Restarting nginx nginx

Now open your application url on browser to see it working.