Convert Microsoft to LINUX: Ruby on Rails MVC Framework

Following in the footsteps of CakePHP there is Ruby on Rails which is also a MVC framework. It is based on the Model, View, Controller (MVC) philosophy:

The Model is the representation of the data. A database is usually encapsulated inside the model.
The View is the way to interact with the Model through a user interface, i.e. dynamic web page.
The Controller processes input from the View and communicates with Model objects.

MVC was first described in 1979 by Trygve Reenskaug , then working on Smalltalk at Xerox PARC.

How to Install Ruby on Rails on Ubuntu 11.10 using without using Ruby Virtual Manager (RVM)

It is preferable if you can get by to install Ruby with out having to resort to the Ruby Virtual Manager. With the RVM other applications can be confused by the path. You may have to do quite a bit of work to get the paths straight. After much experimentation, I found a winning combination of downloading the following Ruby and Rubygems code from source and compiling. Here is what I did:

If you already have RVM installed you want to remove it first with:
rvm implode
To be sure this worked, do:
rm -rf ~/.rvm
if the directory is still there. Don't forget to remove the script calls in your .bashrc and/or .bash_profile (or whatever shell you're using). You may have to close all terminals and then open a new one.
Go here to get the latest Ruby and Ruby Gems source. For me that was ruby-1.9.3-p0 and rubygems-1.8.15
do the tar -zxvf ruby-1.9.3-p0.tar.gz
cd ruby-1.9.3-p0/
./configure
make
sudo make install
ruby -v
similarly ...
tar -zxvf rubygems-1.8.15.tgz
cd rubygems-1.8.15/
sudo ruby setup.rb --no-format-executable
gem -v
You will probably get not found so you need to update your path environemnt variable. Doing a locate gem
/usr/local/bin/gem
for where it lives.
export PATH=/usr/local/bin:$PATH
echo $PATH
Verify versions of everything and install rails.
gem -v
gem update --system
sudo gem install rails --no-rdoc --no-ri
rails -v
If previous was successfull skip using the Ruby Version Manger and jump to the Setting up the Phusion Passenger Install
section below.

How to Install Ruby on Rails on Ubuntu 11.10 using Ruby Virtual Manager (RVM)

To install Ruby on Rails get all the usual LAMP modules, i.e.:
apt-get install apache2 php5 mysql-client mysql-server php5-mysql
Restart Apache2 to be safe with the command:
/etc/init.d/apache2 reload
Riding the Rails these days is a lot more complex than it used to be. After messing around for a day to update my page from 2009 I was getting into some huge stumbling blocks such as:
zlib missing
mysql2 module missing
ExecJS::RuntimeUnavailable
no such file to load -- openssl
This happened when doing the intial rvm install 1.9.2
That is the initial ruby install or
gem install rails
bundle install
which runs automatically when you are creating a new Rails app with:
rails new blog -d mysql
Note, the previous is run in the /home/victor/myapp directory which is my default for Rails applications. Thankfully there is a way out of this conundrum here My hats are off to Mircea Goia who deserves a thousand thankyous!!! Note, I have just given you a link so you can get it directly from Mircea. I will try and keep the copy on my site current with his as he updates it. Bravisimo! Following is what worked for me on my little Asus eeePC. Please read his brillant document first which I am providing.

Now, that you have read the 40 page document, you will see that the key here is using the Ruby Version Manager. This way you can keep all your Rubies and Rails straight and change them on the fly. You can do this because you installed Git that I mentioned in my Drupal Webpage (at the bottom), which does configuration control management of programming code. It is the next thing after subversion created by the great Linus Torvalds who invented Linux!

This is a brief summary of what I did:

sudo apt-get install build-essential git-core curl
Get the git modules in there for now.
bash < <(curl -s https://rvm.beginrescueend.com/install/rvm)
This will get the Ruby Virtual Manager in there for compiling from Souce various version of Ruby. We are going for the 1.92 here for Ruby and the 3.1 for Rails.
echo '[[ -s "$HOME/.rvm/scripts/rvm" ]] && source "$HOME/.rvm/scripts/rvm"' >> ~/.bashrc
Now see if you can execute the home .bashrc script. I could not so I had to make it executable with:
~/.bashrc
ls -al .bashrc
chmod 744 .bashrc
~/.bashrc
source ~/.bashrc
Now put in all the other goodies. Note, this is from the Ubuntu repositories.

sudo apt-get install build-essential openssl libreadline6 libreadline6-dev zlib1g zlib1g-dev
Note, you do not install zlib with sudo because it does not exist in the repos for 11.10.
sudo apt-get install libssl-dev libyaml-dev libsqlite3-0 libsqlite3-dev sqlite3 libxml2-dev
sudo apt-get install libxslt-dev autoconf libc6-dev ncurses-dev automake libtool bison
rvm install 1.9.2
Install the sucker. If it's successfull type:
ruby -v
and you should get a version number back of 1.9.2. If not successfull follow the master's doc I mentioned in the first paragraph of this web page.
rvm --default use 1.9.2
This will force Ruby Virtual Manger to use this version for all terminals. You can change it any time with:
rvm use x.y.z
where x.y.z are the new version numbers you are testing. Now install rails without sudo because you are using the Ruby package manager gem
gem install rails
rails -v
should give you 3.1.0 for me. pwd
to verify you are where you want to be, i.e. home/victor/
ls
and you should see a directory myapp, if not there create it. cd myapp
rails new blog -d mysql
to create my new Rails application blog. Now I need to edit the database appropriately to put in passwords in this file:
vi blog/config/database.yml
rake db:create
to create a database. I got an error that was mentioned at the very top of this page about a missing execjs module in the Gemfile so I did:
cd blog
vi Gemfile
I added in the two lines below:
gem 'execjs'
gem 'therubyracer'
You can add it in anywhere, but I tried to do it in alphabetical order. Then at the blog
directory type:
bundle install
rake db:create
rails server
Lastly, update the gem with
sudo gem update --system
You are now through the hardest part, take a break.

For testing keep the Webrick server, but later you may want to install the Phusion Passenger so you can ride in style on the Rails with your production server. It is all in the doc, just hop on board!

Verifying Proper Installation

It is real important to verify that you have everything running doing the Webrick test, that is go to a terminal prompt and type the following:
cd /home/victor/myapp/blog
Note, I created the blog Ruby test application using the Linux tutorial mentioned at the end of this page. In the directory type:
rails server
to launch the Webrick server.(Yeah, it is a brick, we will not use it for production, relax!) Then when you go to:
http://localhost:3000 in your web browser and click on the about your applications environment you shoud see all of this:

Ruby version 1.9.2 (i686-linux)
RubyGems version 1.8.10
Rack version 1.3
Rails version 3.1.3
JavaScript Runtime therubyracer (V8)
Active Record version 3.1.3
Action Pack version 3.1.3
Active Resource version 3.1.3
Action Mailer version 3.1.3
Active Support version 3.1.3
There is a gap of stuff I am leaving out *******
Application root /home/victor/myapp/blog
Environment development
Database adapter mysql2
Database schema version 0

If you do not see all this, check the load order for any web servers that you have, i.e.:
/etc/init.d/apache start
rails server from your /home/victor/myapp/blog directory
I found that if I reversed the load order of the above, I would get an error. It is darn finicky, if you ask me. This is the hardest part of the entire Ruby project. You can waste days, thinking something is wrong when it is just the server order load.

Setting up the Phusion Passenger Mod Rewrite Apache2 Interface

This was a little bit tricky after doing
sudo passenger-install-apache2-module
You can follow the document from Mircea Goia , I mentioned earlier. I had to do these additional things to get it working for me.

I choose a different socket than the standard port 80 for http. I choose to use port 81. I had to add this to my ports.conf file in /etc/apache2/ports.conf
# Following is used for testing Passenger Phusion on Ruby on Rails
# with mod rewrite enabled
NameVirtualHost *:81
Listen 81

This is my /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/blog
file

Do NOT type passenger start
which you may be used to doing in Linux. This will install passenger and remember, we only want gem to install passenger. Once Ruby is there, gem does all the installing. I had done this and got myself in a jam. The solution was to uninstall passenger and begin again. It may have also installed the nginx server with that too. If so remove that too please.

For a finishing touch delete or rename the default index.html in the public directory. You can then edit /home/victor/myapp/blog/config/routes.rb file with:

Blog::Application.routes.draw do
get "welcome/index"
..... not changing stuff in between what is generated by default.
# You can have the root of your site routed with "root"
# just remember to delete public/index.html.
root :to => 'welcome#index'
# victor uncommented above.

# See how all your routes lay out with "rake routes"

# This is a legacy wild controller route that's not recommended for RESTful applications.
# Note: This route will make all actions in every controller accessible via GET requests.
# match ':controller(/:action(/:id(.:format)))'
end

As a final step I used the rails generater to generate a welcome controller
Type in the /home/victor/myapp/blog/script directory:
rails generate controller welcome
It is just that simple, really!

Now for the final test, do the webbrick thing, i.e. rails server in the ../script directory, you ought to be used to that by now. Go to your server and do
localhost:3000
Go back to the terminal and shut the webbrick server down with a ctrl - C.
Now back to the browser and change the 3000 to 81 the phusion passenger port.
localhost:81
You should see exactly the same thing with your welcome message. One of these servers might be a little quicker for you.

Rails 3.1 Tutorial

A lot has changed between Rails 2 and Rails 3, therefore I recommend this tutorial highly. Among the stuff to take notice of is the routes.rb syntax is completely different from what it was before. This should be enough to get you well on your way. Note, it is written for the MS Windows folks, but is almost identical in Linux on Ubuntu for me. Instead of "bundle exec rake db:migrate" you would use:
rake db:migrate
Also note if you try to run the rails console in the script directory you may get the error about readline module missing . This is solved by the following:
sudo apt-get install libreadline-gplv2-dev lib64readline-gplv2-dev
Change directories to the ruby rvm source directory for your particular version:
cd /home/victor/.rvm/src/ruby-1.9.2-p290/ext/readline/
ruby extconf.rb
make
make install
cd -
This should return you to the ..script directory where you can again run:
rails c
the console.

Installing Chef a Sample Ruby Application for configuring Servers

So what is all this good for? There are a lot of applications out there that use the Ruby Platform. One of them is Chef from Opscode Inc. Here is there Fast Start Guide for installing it. Note, I had to install both the Ruby and the Ruybgems from source, as described in the very first section of this web page. To verify that Ruby is running properly you not only want a version number, but you should be able to find a rbconfig.rb file . i.e. :
locate rbconfig.rb
/home/victor/Downloads/ruby-1.9.3-p0/rbconfig.rb
You must recompile your source if you do not have this file. Also for the Chef application do not use RVM (Ruby Virtual Manager) otherwise this config file will not be found.

You can now follow along in the Fast Start guide copying the generated keys to get the chef-client installed. I ran into an error saying that
Config has been deprecated, use RbConfig instead
when doing the final command with
sudo chef-client
Therefore I edited the ohai/plugins/os.rb files replacing the appropriate line as in below:
sudo vi /usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/ohai-0.6.10/lib/ohai/plugins/os.rb
#This is the replaced line
case ::RbConfig::CONFIG['host_os']
# Victor changed previous line RbConfig is now used instead of Config
After doing this rerun the "sudo chef-client" command and do the same for any more files you may find. For me this was in :
/usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/systemu-2.2.0/lib/systemu.rb
Now everything should work when you do a
sudo chef-client

[Sun, 15 Jan 2012 16:54:14 -0800] INFO: *** Chef 0.10.8 ***
[Sun, 15 Jan 2012 16:54:18 -0800] INFO: Run List is []
[Sun, 15 Jan 2012 16:54:18 -0800] INFO: Run List expands to []
[Sun, 15 Jan 2012 16:54:18 -0800] INFO: Starting Chef Run for victor-900HA
[Sun, 15 Jan 2012 16:54:18 -0800] INFO: Running start handlers
[Sun, 15 Jan 2012 16:54:18 -0800] INFO: Start handlers complete.
[Sun, 15 Jan 2012 16:54:19 -0800] INFO: Loading cookbooks []
[Sun, 15 Jan 2012 16:54:19 -0800] WARN: Node victor-900HA has an empty run list.
[Sun, 15 Jan 2012 16:54:25 -0800] INFO: Chef Run complete in 7.116631734 seconds
[Sun, 15 Jan 2012 16:54:25 -0800] INFO: Running report handlers
[Sun, 15 Jan 2012 16:54:25 -0800] INFO: Report handlers complete

victor@victor-900HA:~/chef-repo$ knife client list
convert-validator
victor-900HA

Now you can move on to working with Cookbooks if you choose.

Enjoy!

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Convert Microsoft to LINUX: Ruby on Rails MVC Framework

How to Install Ruby on Rails on Ubuntu 11.10 using without using Ruby Virtual Manager (RVM)

How to Install Ruby on Rails on Ubuntu 11.10 using Ruby Virtual Manager (RVM)

Verifying Proper Installation

Setting up the Phusion Passenger Mod Rewrite Apache2 Interface

Rails 3.1 Tutorial

Installing Chef a Sample Ruby Application for configuring Servers