Rails System Back on Track
Posted by danp June 11, 2006 @ 10:21 PM
Hopefully you didn’t notice, but I’ve been very busy this weekend. I finally took the plunge and got all the Rails applications that run on this machine up to snuff. All applications hosted here are now deployed with Capistrano, run under Mongrel (using the mongrel_cluster plugin) with requests being handled by Apache 2.2 and proxied to Mongrel by the mod_proxy_balancer module. So far it seems to be working great. You’ll notice that the Wiki, the Manuals and the weblog are all much zippier. The machine seems to be much happier as well.
And, to cap off all this fun, the weblog has been migrated from Typo to Mephisto, the blog/CMS engine from Rails Core member Rick Olson. The feed has also been moved to FeedBurner and redirects have been put in place so your reader should make the change automatically. If not, just subscribe here.
Thanks to everyone who helped me check and test things! Trac improvements are next on my list. Stay tuned!
Bravo!
How about fixing IE rendering?
Any progress yet?
Why Apache instead of Lighttpd?
Nice stuff, but what’s the rationale for the move from Typo? Just wondering. Is there a reason we shouldn’t use Typo anymore?
Thank you! Any chance we could get some gorier details on your apache/mongrel setup? Perhaps this blog may not be the best forum. Speaking of the blog, is mephisto public?
As long as you fixed the ajax update bug in firefox, we’re all ok. :)
Wow, Now they’re just deleting any message that mentions the old ajax update bug
regarding the new weblog software, it’s now dangerous to hit reload as it tries to re-post the form. Couldn’t we use a redirect?
My bad, looks like there’s either a delay or a moderation effect in place. I’ll stop posting now. :)
Note: Comments now have to wait for approval by a moderator. At least for the time being, until we have a more automated solution. If your comment doesn’t appear immediately, just wait a bit.
Mephisto’s been public for awhile, I just haven’t had a release parade or anything. Justin Palmer and I were cranking on this for awhile, but we both got busy with other projects.
Anyways, check it out at http://svn.techno-weenie.net/projects/mephisto/trunk/, and follow along on my blog for the latest. Just set up the db and do ‘rake db:bootstrap’ to start rocking. Word of warning: Mephisto uses Liquid templates for the views, and the tags are currently undocumented. Still working on that bit :)
What about Capistrano task for mongrel cluster setup?
Here’s a cap/mongrel setup procedure using Rails Machine: “http://pastie.caboo.se/686:http://pastie.caboo.se/686. Not sure if this is what dan used or not though.
Let’s see a writeup or article on the process? I’m sure I’m not the only one who’d be interested….
Great, the weblog feels snappier, indeed.
+1 for a write up on all this!
FYI: When attempting to view the Feedburner feed, I am met with an “Application Error (Rails)” message. I have a screenshot if you would like it. I navigated to the feed by clicking on the link to it from within Google Reader.
I’ve never understood why no one’s ever done
validates_uniqueness_of :comment, :scope => [:user, :post]
Not sure if yer aware, but the syndication feed is down.
Looks like the Feedburner RSS feed is erroring out.
Just figured you should know.
Also looks like the categories link on the individual posts pages are broken. on this page is links to /2006/6/11/general instead of to /general. When the broek link is clicked it brings up “Application Error (Rails)”
There were (are) probably a lot of lessons learned in doing this. I too think it would be great to share them. Every time any Rails app on the net is slow and/or shows the dreaded “Application Error(Rails) page, it’s bad for the entire community. If you can keep just one of us from screwing-up our deploys, then it’s worth it! Thanks.
which webserver were you using before? lighttpd + fastcgi?
woo mephisto!
For the blog, it’d be nice if there was an indication of whether or not one is seeing the entire post on the front page, or just the two first paragraphs.
For some inspiration, check out http://www.456bereastreet.com/
The “Continued…” link, gives the user a hint that there might be more :)
Some more info on how you created this setup would be great for those of us who are struggling with the same thing, particularly, how you got capistrano to play nice with everything.
I’m a big fan of mongrel, but as much as I wanted to use it, I’ve found that mod_fcgid and Apache kicks its butt.
It seems like a well-kept secret, but mod_fcgid has been super reliable and fast for me. In particular with the latest version (that keeps n number of fcgi’s running at all times). I’ve had none of the fastcgi problems with Apache that I used to have, and my benchmark tests show performance twice that of mongrel. In fact, it’s equal to lighttpd for rails. Although lightty still slightly beats Apache on static content.
Am I just doing something wrong? Or is there something bad I don’t know about? I trust the Rails core team are far better at this than I am. But so far mod_fcgid totally seems to be the best choice for Rails+Apache.
I’d be really interested in any comments on this.
Cheers, John
http://fastcgi.coremail.cn/
Any chance you can change the feed to a smart feed? It appears to be an Atom feed which not all RSS readers can parse.
Also one last comment for the admin. The main weblog.rubyonrails.com looks very bad on IE 6, the side bar is overlaying the blog entries.
For those wanting a more detailed recount of the changes made, danp went into more detail on his personal blog, found here:
http://piece.dpiddy.net/1293f778f98c
That links directly to the post.
Cheers,
M.T.