DWELL - a cap recipe to setup a full Rails stack on Ubuntu

Install Capistrano2 (if you don't already have it) then build and install this gem:

$ sudo gem install capistrano
$ gem build dwell.gemspec
$ sudo gem install dwell-0.2.gem

Typical Usage

  1. Capify your Rails directory
  2. Initialize dwell inside your Rails directory (you'll want to overwrite deploy.rb)
  3. Edit your deploy.rb: configure you applications name, domain, repository, server details, etc
  4. Bootstrap your server
  5. Install the Dwell stack and any optional packages
  6. Setup your rails app and apache vhost then deploy cold

Or all said and done:

$ capify .
$ dwell init .
$ cap dwell:server:bootstrap
$ cap dwell:install
$ cap dwell:rails:setup_and_deploy_cold

The Dwell Stack - dwell:install

  1. Updates Ubuntu sources and distro
  2. Installs Apache2
  3. Installs MySQL5
  4. Installs Subversion and Git
  5. Installs Ruby, RubyGems, Rails and Merb
  6. Installs Passenger module for Apache2
  7. Installs any optional packages listed in :dwell_optional_installs

Optional Packages

You can specify optional packages to be installed during dwell:install in your deploy.rb file:

set :dwell_optional_installs, [:postfix, :imagemagick, :php]

Optional packages include:

  • postfix
  • mercurial
  • tinydns
  • php (sets up php via fastcig)
  • imagemagick (binary, gem, and mini-magick gem)
  • sqlite (binary and gem)

Bootstrapping

dwell:server:bootstrap

  1. Creates a user account for :user (default 'deploy') in the admin group
  2. Gives the admin group sudo rights if they haven't already
  3. Copies authorized SSH keys to the remote host (such as your own public key)
  4. Disables SSH logins for the root account since we'll be using deploy and sudo

Authorized keys should be placed in the file (:user is the name of your deploy user):

config/dwell/authorized_keys/:user

dwell:linode:bootstrap

  1. Does a dwell:server:bootstrap as show above
  2. Uses the DHCP IP assignment to configure a static IP and disable DHCP
  3. Sets up the hostname of the box from what was passed in HOSTS

You MUST pass the host (singular) in HOSTS to bootstrap a Linode as the bootstrap needs to know the hostname to properly configure the box.

HOSTS="my.new.box.com" cap dwell:linode:bootstrap

Rails Notes - dwell:rails

dwell:rails:setup_and_deploy_cold

  1. Does a traditional cap:setup
  2. Copies deploy keys (if found) to the remote host (needed for git, etc)
  3. Creates a mysql database with the authentication info in your database.yml
  4. Sets up an apache vhost and SSL keys (if you're using SSL)
  5. Deploys your code
  6. Installs any necessary app gems with rake gems:install
  7. Runs migrations
  8. Reloads Apache which should fire up your app

Optional deploy keys (public and private) should be placed in deploy_keys:

config/dwell/deploy_keys/:user.pub
config/dwell/deploy_keys/:user

Apache Notes - dwell:apache

SSL certificates (if found) will be copied and installed during setup_and_deploy_cold. You can also do this manually with cap dwell:apache:copy_certs. These same certs will referenced automatically in your apache configs if you have set :apache_ssl_enabled in your deploy.rb.

SSL certificates should be saved locally:

config/dwell/ssl/ca/*.crt
config/dwell/ssl/*.crt
config/dwell/ssl/*.key

Any keys inside ssl/ca are assumed to be a Certificate Authority and are added to your Apache config with SSLCACertificateFile.