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This howto guide is based on mod_ruby version 1.2.5 which was the current version at the time of writing this guide. We also need version 1.2.5, since it supports the Apache::RailsDispatcher, which is needed if we want to run RubyOnRails in our Plesk environment.

Download the mod_ruby source code from: http://www.modruby.net/archive/mod_ruby-1.2.5.tar.gz

Extract the .tar.gz file to a suitable location:

cd /usr/src
tar zxvf /usr/local/src/mod_ruby-1.2.5.tar.gz
cd mod_ruby-1.2.5


Run the configure command:

./configure.rb --with-apxs=/usr/sbin/apxs


Now compile the program:

make

Finally, install ruby:

make install


It is now time to configure Apache to run with mod_ruby.

Apache::RailsDispatcher can run multiple applications in the same process. It works like this:

• require loads libraries into the top level, and they are shared with all applications.
• require_dependency loads libraries into an anonymous module for each application.
• In the development environment, the anonymous module is orphaned on each request. So required_dependency loads libraries every time.
• In the production environment, the same anonymous module is used for the same application. So required_dependency loads libraries only at once.
• Rails configurations such as ActiveRecord::Base.colorize_logging are reset on each request.

This hack is just a workaround until YARV supports multiple VM instances. We can get it in the near future, I hope.

To use Apache::RailsDispatcher, you have to write the following configuration in httpd.conf.

RubySafeLevel 0
# If you use RubyGems
# RubyRequire rubygems
RubyRequire apache/rails-dispatcher
RubyTransHandler Apache::RailsDispatcher.instance
<Location /ruby-application-name>
    SetHandler ruby-object
    RubyHandler Apache::RailsDispatcher.instance
    RubyOption rails_uri_root /ruby-application-name
    RubyOption rails_root /path/to/rails/root
    RubyOption rails_env production
</Location>

Please note that you can’t override exinting classes like this:

class Array
    def cycle()
        self.each_with_index {|o, i| yield(o, %w(odd even)[i % 2])}
    end
end

You should prepend Object:: to the class name:

class Object::Array
    def cycle()
        self.each_with_index {|o, i| yield(o, %w(odd even)[i % 2])}
    end
end

This behaivour is same as Kernel.load(filename, true). If you don’t like this, please convince Matz to change it.

Your done. You should now have a valid ruby interperter running on your server.

Portions of this post is courtesy of: http://blog.shugo.net/articles/2005/08/03/running-rails-on-mod_ruby

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 10th, 2006 at 8:57 pm and is filed under General, Plesk for Linux, Ruby on Plesk. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.