Ruby on Rails Deployment on DigitalOcean

deploy_rails_app.md

Ruby on Rails Deployment on DigitalOcean

Prequisites

• HTTP server nginx
• Rails web server passenger
• Database PosgreSQL
• Deployment utility mina

Step 1 - Create your droplet

• Visit DigitalOcean droplet creation url

• Set a name for your droplet

• Select your droplet region

• Select your droplet image (OS), Ubuntu is prefered.

• After creating your droplet, you are going to receive an email from DigitalOcean which contains your root password and instance's IP

  Your new Droplet is all set to go! You can access it using the following credentials

  Droplet Name: eastagile-droplet

  IP Address: 104.236.34.222

  Username: root

  Password: dbvpnxgasrse

Step 2 - Add a sudo user for deployment

• SSH to your instance's IP with your root password

  ssh root@INSTANCE_IP

• As of May 7, Ubuntu 14.04 x64, you may be asked to change root password

  Changing password for root.

  (current) UNIX password:

  Enter new UNIX password:

  Retype new UNIX password:

• Create a new user used for deployment

  adduser deploy

• You will be asked for your deploy user password. Please keep it safe.

• You will be asked a few questions, all of them are optional so that you can hit ENTER to skip those fields.

• Add your newly created user to sudo group

  gpasswd -a deploy sudo

• Add a public key authentication

  • Generate a key pair (from your local machine)

    ssh-keygen

  • Assumming your local username is eastagile, you will see output similar to this

    Generating public/private rsa key pair.

    Enter file in which to save the key (/Users/eastagile/.ssh/id_rsa):

  • Copy the public key

    cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub

  • It should print your public SSH key, which looks similar to this

    ssh-rsa AAAAB3NzaC1yc2EAAAA...

  • Add public key to the new deploy user

    • On the server, as the root user, switch to deploy user

      su - deploy

    • You are now in the deploy user home folder, now create a .ssh folder

      mkdir ~/.ssh

      chmod 700 ~/.ssh

    • In .ssh folder, create a file called authorized_keys and add your public key to this file

      nano .ssh/authorized_keys

    • Restrict the permissions of this file

      chmod 600 ~/.ssh/authorized_keys

    • Return to root user

      exit

  • Configuring SSH

    • Opening configuration file

      nano /etc/ssh/sshd_config

    • Disable root login through SSH by modifying this line in the configuration file

      PermitRootLogin no

    • Save the file and reload SSH service

      service ssh restart

Step 3 - Installing ruby

• SSH to your server via deploy user

  ssh deploy@INSTANCE_IP

• Installing rvm

  curl -sSL https://rvm.io/mpapis.asc | gpg --import -

  curl -sSL https://get.rvm.io | bash -s stable

• Exit your server and ssh to it again to re-sourcing the .bashrc file so that RVM is available

• Update all packages

  sudo apt-get update

• Install ruby

  rvm install 2.2.3

• Use current ruby as default system ruby

  rvm use 2.2.3 --default

• Double check if ruby is installed properly

  ruby -v

  ruby 2.2.3

Step 4 - Installing nginx and passenger

• Install passenger gem

  gem install passenger gem install bundler

• Run the phusion passenger installer and follow the onscreen instruction

  rvmsudo passenger-install-nginx-module

• In my case, I have to run the following commands so that the installation process can continue

  sudo apt-get install libcurl4-openssl-dev

  sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/swap bs=1M count=1024

  sudo mkswap /swap

  sudo swapon /swap

• I chosed option 1 for nginx installation (download, compile and install Nginx for me)

Step 5 - Setup PosgreSQL

• Installing PosgreSQL

  sudo apt-get install postgresql postgresql-contrib

• Login as posgres user

  sudo -i -u postgres

• Run the PosgreSQL console

  psql

• Create a new user and password for your upcoming Rails database (your database username will be deploy and your database password will be deploypassword)

  create role deploy with createdb login password 'deploypassword';

• Also create a deploy database so that you can run psql from deploy user (type \q to quit the psql console)

  create database deploy;

• Exit the posgres user

  exit

Step 5 - Setup nginx

• Install nginx as a service

  wget -O init-deb.sh https://gist.githubusercontent.com/chautoni/1e1dea0ca1a43d245393/raw/c8825bf2e9c9243201e4e0e974626501592ce81e/init-deb.sh

  sudo mv init-deb.sh /etc/init.d/nginx

  sudo chmod +x /etc/init.d/nginx

  sudo /usr/sbin/update-rc.d -f nginx defaults

  sudo service nginx start

• Edit the nginx configuration

  sudo nano /opt/nginx/conf/nginx.conf

• Please make sure that your nginx.conf looks similar to this

	server {
  	listen 80;
  	server_name example.com;
  	passenger_enabled on;
  	root /home/deploy/eastagile_digital_ocean_deployment/current/public;
  }

• Reload the nginx server

  sudo service nginx restart

Step 6 - Setup mina for deployment automation

• Generate mina sample deploy.rb

  mina init

• This is a sample config/deploy.rb after configration

  require 'mina/bundler'
  require 'mina/rails'
  require 'mina/git'
  require 'mina/rvm'    # for rvm support. (http://rvm.io)

  set :domain, '104.236.34.222'
  set :deploy_to, '/home/deploy/eastagile_digital_ocean_deployment'
  set :repository, '[email protected]:chautoni/eastagile_digital_ocean_deployment.git'
  set :branch, 'master'

  set :shared_paths, ['config/database.yml', 'config/secrets.yml', 'log']
  set :user, 'deploy'    # Username in the server to SSH to.
  set :forward_agent, true     # SSH forward_agent.

  task :environment do
    invoke :'rvm:use[ruby-2.1.2@digital_ocean_deployment]'
  end

  task :setup => :environment do
    queue! %[mkdir -p "#{deploy_to}/#{shared_path}/log"]
    queue! %[chmod g+rx,u+rwx "#{deploy_to}/#{shared_path}/log"]

    queue! %[mkdir -p "#{deploy_to}/#{shared_path}/config"]
    queue! %[chmod g+rx,u+rwx "#{deploy_to}/#{shared_path}/config"]

    queue! %[touch "#{deploy_to}/#{shared_path}/config/database.yml"]
    queue  %[echo "-----> Be sure to edit '#{deploy_to}/#{shared_path}/config/database.yml'."]

    queue! %[touch "#{deploy_to}/#{shared_path}/config/secrets.yml"]
    queue  %[echo "-----> Be sure to edit '#{deploy_to}/#{shared_path}/config/secrets.yml'."]
  end

  desc "Deploys the current version to the server."
  task :deploy => :environment do
    to :before_hook do
      # Put things to run locally before ssh
    end
    deploy do
      invoke :'git:clone'
      invoke :'deploy:link_shared_paths'
      invoke :'bundle:install'
      invoke :'rails:db_migrate'
      invoke :'rails:assets_precompile'
      invoke :'deploy:cleanup'

      to :launch do
        queue "mkdir -p #{deploy_to}/#{current_path}/tmp/"
        queue "touch #{deploy_to}/#{current_path}/tmp/restart.txt"
      end
    end
  end

• ssh to your server and create the designated folder for deployment

  mkdir /home/eastagile_digital_ocean_deployment

• Then run mina setup command in your local machine

  mina setup

  -----> Done.

  -----> Be sure to edit '/home/deploy/eastagile_digital_ocean_deployment/shared/config/database.yml'.

  -----> Be sure to edit '/home/deploy/eastagile_digital_ocean_deployment/shared/config/secrets.yml'.

• ssh to your server and edit your database.yml and secrets.yml file with appropriate credentials.

Step 7 - Deploy

• Installing git onto your server

  sudo apt-get install git

• Add github.com cert to your server known_hosts

  ssh-keyscan -H github.com >> ~/.ssh/known_hosts

• Run psql and create eastagile_digital_ocean_deployment database

  create database digital_ocean_production;

• Install additional PosgreSQL and JS runtime packages

  sudo apt-get install nodejs libpq-dev

• Install gem bundle to install gem when deploy on specific gemset > rvm use ruby-2.1.2@digital_ocean_deployment > gem install bundle

• Deploy to server from your local machine

  mina deploy

There is no step 8. Enjoy your deployment.

Revision

• Version 1.0 - Initial guide (ThachChau)
• Version 1.1 - Update guide to latest ruby version 2.2.3
• Version 1.2 - Update missing command: install bundle before run mina deploy

References

• How To Deploy a Rails App with Passenger and Nginx on Ubuntu 14.04
• Initial Server Setup with Ubuntu 14.04
• How To Install and Use PostgreSQL on Ubuntu 14.04