If you’re planning to run Rails applications on Nginx using Phusion Passenger, and do it on Ubuntu Linux, here’s what needs to be done.
Even though there’s Ubuntu nginx package available (which works perfectly when you’re running PHP apps using FCGI), if you want to take into use Phusion Passenger, you’ll need to recompile Nginx from sources.
Instructions below were verified on Ubuntu 10.04 (Lucid Lynx) Server Edition.
If you already have Nginx ubuntu package installed, uninstall it (NOTE! purge will delete all configuration files – so if you changed them – make a backup for future reference):
sudo aptitude purge nginx
Assuming you already have Rails stack installed, install Passenger gem:
sudo gem install passenger
At the time of this writing the latest version of Passenger is 2.2.11
Let’s check dependencies that Ubuntu nginx package has and install them before compilation:
aptitude show nginx | grep Depends
You’ll see something like:
Depends: libc6 (>= 2.4), libpcre3 (>= 7.7), libssl0.9.8 (>= 0.9.8k-1), zlib1g
Install build dependencies and start nginx module installation (it will offer you to recompile nginx)
sudo apt-get install libc6 libpcre3 libssl0.9.8 zlib1g sudo /usr/local/bin/passenger-install-nginx-module
Choose option 1 (Yes: download, compile and install Nginx for me) unless you need special configuration parameters or need features not enabled by default (like SSL).
Further instructions assume that you also chose default installation directory /opt/nginx.
If you’ve purchased Passenger Enterprise Edition, don’t forget to register it:
sudo /usr/local/bin/passenger-make-enterprisey
Now add nginx init script (I just copied this from Ubuntu default nginx package):
sudo vim /etc/init.d/nginx
with the following content:
#! /bin/sh
### BEGIN INIT INFO
# Provides: nginx
# Required-Start: $local_fs $remote_fs $network $syslog
# Required-Stop: $local_fs $remote_fs $network $syslog
# Default-Start: 2 3 4 5
# Default-Stop: 0 1 6
# Short-Description: starts the nginx web server
# Description: starts nginx using start-stop-daemon
### END INIT INFO
PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/opt/nginx/sbin
DAEMON=/opt/nginx/sbin/nginx
NAME=nginx
DESC=nginx
test -x $DAEMON || exit 0
# Include nginx defaults if available
if [ -f /etc/default/nginx ] ; then
. /etc/default/nginx
fi
set -e
. /lib/lsb/init-functions
test_nginx_config() {
if nginx -t $DAEMON_OPTS
then
return 0
else
return $?
fi
}
case "$1" in
start)
echo -n "Starting $DESC: "
test_nginx_config
start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile /var/run/$NAME.pid \
--exec $DAEMON -- $DAEMON_OPTS || true
echo "$NAME."
;;
stop)
echo -n "Stopping $DESC: "
start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --pidfile /var/run/$NAME.pid \
--exec $DAEMON || true
echo "$NAME."
;;
restart|force-reload)
echo -n "Restarting $DESC: "
start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --pidfile \
/var/run/$NAME.pid --exec $DAEMON || true
sleep 1
test_nginx_config
start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile \
/var/run/$NAME.pid --exec $DAEMON -- $DAEMON_OPTS || true
echo "$NAME."
;;
reload)
echo -n "Reloading $DESC configuration: "
test_nginx_config
start-stop-daemon --stop --signal HUP --quiet --pidfile /var/run/$NAME.pid \
--exec $DAEMON || true
echo "$NAME."
;;
configtest)
echo -n "Testing $DESC configuration: "
if test_nginx_config
then
echo "$NAME."
else
exit $?
fi
;;
status)
status_of_proc -p /var/run/$NAME.pid "$DAEMON" nginx && exit 0 || exit $?
;;
*)
echo "Usage: $NAME {start|stop|restart|reload|force-reload|status|configtest}" >&2
exit 1
;;
esac
exit 0
Now make this script executable add it to default run levels:
sudo chmod +x /etc/init.d/nginx sudo /usr/sbin/update-rc.d -f nginx defaults
Edit nginx.conf to look like this:
user www-data;
worker_processes 4;
error_log /opt/nginx/logs/error.log;
pid /var/run/nginx.pid;
events {
worker_connections 8192;
use epoll;
}
http {
passenger_root /usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/passenger-2.2.11;
passenger_ruby /usr/local/bin/ruby;
include /opt/nginx/conf/mime.types;
# set a default type for the rare situation that
# nothing matches from the mimie-type include
default_type application/octet-stream;
# This log format is compatible with any tool like awstats
# that can parse standard apache logs.
log_format main '$remote_addr - $remote_user [$time_local] '
'"$request" $status $body_bytes_sent "$http_referer" '
'"$http_user_agent" "$http_x_forwarded_for"' ;
access_log /opt/nginx/logs/access.log;
sendfile on;
tcp_nopush on;
keepalive_timeout 0;
tcp_nodelay on;
gzip on;
gzip_disable "MSIE [1-6]\.(?!.*SV1)";
gzip_http_version 1.0;
gzip_comp_level 2;
gzip_proxied any;
gzip_types text/plain text/css application/x-javascript text/xml application/xml application/xml+rss text/javascript;
include /opt/nginx/conf/sites-enabled/*;
}
Now create virtual hosts structure (so that it looks like the structure created by Ubuntu original nginx package):
sudo mkdir /opt/nginx/conf/sites-available sudo mkdir /opt/nginx/conf/sites-enabled
Now it is time to configure your first rails site. Create virtual host configuration in sites-available.
sudo vim /opt/nginx/conf/sites-available/mysite.com
Content can be something like:
server {
listen 80;
server_name www.mysite.com;
access_log /home/user/logs/www.mysite.com/access.log;
root /home/user/www.mysite.com/public;
# serve static content directly
location ~* \.(ico|jpg|gif|png|css|js|swf|html)$ {
if (-f $request_filename) {
expires max;
break;
}
}
passenger_enabled on;
# deny access to .htaccess files, if Apache's document root
# concurs with nginx's one
#
location ~ /\.ht {
deny all;
}
}
Make a symlink in sites-enabled directory and restart nginx.
sudo ln -s /opt/nginx/conf/sites-available/mysite.com /opt/nginx/conf/sites-enabled/mysite.com sudo /etc/init.d/nginx restart
Now open the browser and check that your site is working.
