Prepare cPanel/WHM and Ruby for Redmine: A Walk-Through

11

Acqal Project Management via Redmine

Apache Configuration Modifications

cPanel-WHM Ruby Gem Installer

Phusion Passenger AKA mod_rails Saves the Day

passenger-install-apache2-module ruby.conf

By: Michael Cannon

Submitting your vote...

Rating: 4.5 of 5. 2 vote(s).
Click the rating bar to rate this item.

Despite our abysmal first attempt with installing the Redmine project management software back in September, we've been loving Redmine for helping keep our projects on track. As we get closer to a mid-February launch of high-availability, failover TYPO3 hosting, we wanted to migrate our non-TYPO3 websites and special server configurations to new environments.

As Redmine is a Ruby-based project management system, this meant spinning up a new CentOS 5 server with cPanel/WHM and Ruby. This time around though, our week-long headache only lasted 4 hours. Out of it, comes the following walk-through to get Ruby up and running on cPanel/WHM easily for you.

Walk-Through: cPanel/WHM and Ruby

• Review Ruby on Rails and cPanel/WHM and Passenger install
• Log into the server via SSH
• As root or via sudo run the following commands

unset RUBYOPT
/scripts/installruby
/usr/local/cpanel/bin/ror_setup
passenger-install-apache2-module

• The passenger-install-apache2-module command is interactive. Accept its notices by pressing the Enter button. At the end of the passenger-install-apache2-module, you'll need to update Apache configuration files.
• Create /usr/local/apache/conf/ruby.conf and add to it the lines given from passenger-install-apache2-module like the following

LoadModule passenger_module /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/passenger-2.2.5/ext/apache2/mod_passenger.so
PassengerRoot /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/passenger-2.2.5
PassengerRuby /usr/bin/ruby

• Next, edit /usr/local/apache/conf/httpd.conf and add

Include "/usr/local/apache/conf/ruby.conf"

below

Include "/usr/local/apache/conf/php.conf"

• While still editing httpd.conf, we need to let our project management domain VirtualHost use custom Apache directives. To do so, remove the "#" before the Include like below.

<VirtualHost XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX:80>
    ServerName SUB.DOMAIN.com
    …
    Include "/usr/local/apache/conf/userdata/std/2/USERNAME/SUB.DOMAIN.com/*.conf"
    …
</VirtualHost>

• As changes to httpd.conf need to preserved for future updates, it's vitally important to run the apache_conf_distiller. More on Custom Directives to httpd.conf.

/usr/local/cpanel/bin/apache_conf_distiller --update --main

• Since it's easier to install Redmine as a whole into /home/USERNAME/public_html, we'll use a custom Apache directive to change the DocumentRoot in a file called /usr/local/apache/conf/userdata/std/2/USERNAME/SUB.DOMAIN.com/vhost.conf to point to the Ruby on Rails public directory.

DocumentRoot /home/USERNAME/public_html/public 

• Once the project domain's custom Apache directives are saved, they also need to checked and preserved. To update the include files for your user, run

/scripts/ensure_vhost_includes --user=USERNAME

• To confirm that your domain's custom directives are included, you can run the following.

/scripts/verify_vhost_includes

• If you didn't need custom Apache directives, you'll need to restart Apache.

/scripts/restartsrv_httpd

At this point, your ready to go with running the Redmine installation on your cPanel/WHM server. The Links section offers further references and please feel free to comment or ask questions via comments below.

Please subscribe to Acqal Newsletter and Acqal Blogging via Email or RSS Feed .

© 2009 Acqal Corporation. All Rights Reserved.