Getting ruby 1.9.1 and nginx and passenger and ubuntu to all play nicely is fairly straightforward, but it’s not just “apt-get” and “gem install” lovin’.

Making ruby 1.9.1 the default ruby is OK. Follow these steps:

Install ruby 1.9.1

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install ruby1.9.1 ruby1.9.1-dev \
  rubygems1.9.1 irb1.9.1 ri1.9.1 rdoc1.9.1 \
  build-essential nginx libopenssl-ruby1.9.1 libssl-dev zlib1g-dev

sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/ruby ruby /usr/bin/ruby1.9.1 400 \
         --slave   /usr/share/man/man1/ruby.1.gz ruby.1.gz \
                        /usr/share/man/man1/ruby1.9.1.1.gz \
        --slave   /usr/bin/ri ri /usr/bin/ri1.9.1 \
        --slave   /usr/bin/irb irb /usr/bin/irb1.9.1 \
        --slave   /usr/bin/rdoc rdoc /usr/bin/rdoc1.9.1

sudo update-alternatives --config ruby

OK, now that we’ve got ruby 1.9.1 and g++, we can build passenger:

sudo gem install passenger

But that throws the executable “passenger-install-nginx-module” into a subdirectory. Exec from there:

cd /var/lib/gems/1.9.1/gems/passenger-2.2.11/bin
sudo ./passenger-install-nginx-module

And according to the build script, we’re done!

But we aren’t. At least for me, I needed to

Fix up the configurations

First up /etc/init.d/nginx in a sudo’ed editor, and replace these two lines:

PATH=/opt/nginx/sbin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin
DAEMON=/opt/nginx/sbin/nginx

If you fail to do this, you’ll see this error when you run /etc/init.d/nginx restart:

$ sudo /etc/init.d/nginx start
Starting nginx: [emerg]: unknown directive "passenger_enabled" in /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default:32
configuration file /etc/nginx/nginx.conf test failed

This is because /usr/sbin/nginx doesn’t know how to dance Phusion, hence the need to update the init script.

(TODO: there should be an update-alternatives solution to this, but I can’t find a recipe to replace an existing binary)

You also may see this:

Restarting nginx: the configuration file /opt/nginx/conf/nginx.conf syntax is ok
configuration file /opt/nginx/conf/nginx.conf test is successful
[emerg]: bind() to 0.0.0.0:80 failed (98: Address already in use)
[emerg]: bind() to 0.0.0.0:80 failed (98: Address already in use)
[emerg]: bind() to 0.0.0.0:80 failed (98: Address already in use)
[emerg]: bind() to 0.0.0.0:80 failed (98: Address already in use)
[emerg]: bind() to 0.0.0.0:80 failed (98: Address already in use)
[emerg]: still could not bind()
nginx.

Something (most likely apache2) is already listening on port 80. Find out with lsof:

$ sudo lsof -i tcp:80
COMMAND   PID   USER   FD   TYPE DEVICE SIZE/OFF NODE NAME
nginx   14790   root    6u  IPv4  29964      0t0  TCP *:www (LISTEN)
nginx   14798 nobody    6u  IPv4  29964      0t0  TCP *:www (LISTEN)

If it’s apache, edit /etc/apache2/ports.conf and shove it to some other port (like 8888) and run /etc/init.d/apache2 restart:

NameVirtualHost *:8888
Listen 8888

Add your rails configuration

In /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default, in the server { ... } section, add

	location /underpants {
		root /webapps/underpants/public;
		passenger_enabled on;
	}

and restart nginx.

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