Moving Past Beta

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I got the beta site up and running yesterday. Since then, it has worked just fine, thank you very much. It is still running right now. Why am I a bit defensive? Well, because I started it in non-daemon mode. It is still running in one of my GNU screen windows.

That's fine for development mode, borderline OK for a limited beta, but is completely unacceptable for a production system. A good start would be to start the server as a daemon:

$ thin -d -R config.ru start

That might be OK for one time, but I would have to remember to do that each time I restart the system—not so OK.

The answer to that is, of course, an init.d script. Happily, I do not have to roll my own with thin:

sh-3.2$ sudo /var/lib/gems/1.8/bin/thin install
>> Installing thin service at /etc/init.d/thin ...
mkdir -p /etc/init.d
writing /etc/init.d/thin
chmod +x /etc/init.d/thin
mkdir -p /etc/thin

To configure thin to start at system boot:
on RedHat like systems:
  sudo /sbin/chkconfig --level 345 thin on
on Debian-like systems (Ubuntu):
  sudo /usr/sbin/update-rc.d -f thin defaults
on Gentoo:
  sudo rc-update add thin default

Then put your config files in /etc/thin

Hmmm... Not only am I running on a Debian-like system, I am running on Debian itself, so:

sh-3.2$ sudo /usr/sbin/update-rc.d -f thin defaults
 Adding system startup for /etc/init.d/thin ...
   /etc/rc0.d/K20thin -> ../init.d/thin
   /etc/rc1.d/K20thin -> ../init.d/thin
   /etc/rc6.d/K20thin -> ../init.d/thin
   /etc/rc2.d/S20thin -> ../init.d/thin
   /etc/rc3.d/S20thin -> ../init.d/thin
   /etc/rc4.d/S20thin -> ../init.d/thin
   /etc/rc5.d/S20thin -> ../init.d/thin

I will run the application out of /var/www rather than my home directory:

sh-3.2$ sudo mkdir /var/www
sh-3.2$ cd /var/www
sh-3.2$ sudo chown www-data:www-data .
sh-3.2$ cd /var/www/
sh-3.2$ sudo cp -r /home/cstrom/repos/eee-code .
sh-3.2$ sudo mkdir log
sh-3.2$ sudo chown -R www-data:www-data .

With the app in place, I can edit my /etc/thin/eee.yml file to contain:

--- 
user: www-data
group: www-data
pid: log/thin.pid
log: log/thin.log
timeout: 60
port: 4567
address: 127.0.0.1
chdir: /var/www/eee-code
environment: production
daemonize: true
rackup: config.ru

I did try running directly from port 80 at first, but found this in the log:

/var/lib/gems/1.8/gems/eventmachine-0.12.8/lib/eventmachine.rb:565:in `start_tcp_server': no acceptor (RuntimeError)
        from /var/lib/gems/1.8/gems/eventmachine-0.12.8/lib/eventmachine.rb:565:in `start_server'
        from /var/lib/gems/1.8/gems/thin-1.2.2/lib/thin/backends/tcp_server.rb:16:in `connect'
        from /var/lib/gems/1.8/gems/thin-1.2.2/lib/thin/backends/base.rb:49:in `start'
...

Sooo....

sh-3.2$ sudo apt-get install nginx

To get nginx to reverse proxy to my thin server running on port 4567, I need a sites-enabled file along the lines of:

# vi /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/eeecooks.com 
upstream beta_eeecooks_com {
  server 127.0.0.1:4567;
}

server {
  listen    80;
  server_name beta.eeecooks.com;
  access_log /var/www/eee-code/log/logfile.log;
  
  location / {
    proxy_pass http://beta_eeecooks_com;
  }
  
}

The upstream server is running on the localhost at port 4567. I nickname it as "beta_eeecooks_com". The server then proxy_passes everything to that server. Easy enough (after 10 minutes of wondering why it wasn't working only to discover I had created that configuration in the sites-available directory, not the sites-enabled directory!).

With that, I am assured that my server(s) will start whenever there is a reboot. I could use a way to check that it keeps running after start, but that will have to wait until tomorrow.

Before calling it a day, I note with some amount of sadness that someone tried to send email feedback today. The sadness is not because I do not desire feedback, quite the opposite. The sadness is due to the loss of the feedback. From my logs:

Errno::ECONNREFUSED - Connection refused - connect(2):
 /usr/lib/ruby/1.8/net/smtp.rb:551:in `initialize'
 /usr/lib/ruby/1.8/net/smtp.rb:551:in `open'
 /usr/lib/ruby/1.8/net/smtp.rb:551:in `do_start'
 /usr/lib/ruby/1.8/timeout.rb:62:in `timeout'
 /usr/lib/ruby/1.8/timeout.rb:93:in `timeout'
 /usr/lib/ruby/1.8/net/smtp.rb:551:in `do_start'
 /usr/lib/ruby/1.8/net/smtp.rb:531:in `start'
 eee.rb:188:in `POST /email'
 eee.rb:178Errno::ECONNREFUSED: Connection refused - connect(2)
        /usr/lib/ruby/1.8/net/smtp.rb:551:in `initialize'
        /usr/lib/ruby/1.8/net/smtp.rb:551:in `open'
        /usr/lib/ruby/1.8/net/smtp.rb:551:in `do_start'
        /usr/lib/ruby/1.8/timeout.rb:62:in `timeout'
        /usr/lib/ruby/1.8/timeout.rb:93:in `timeout'
        /usr/lib/ruby/1.8/net/smtp.rb:551:in `do_start'
        /usr/lib/ruby/1.8/net/smtp.rb:531:in `start'
        /var/lib/gems/1.8/gems/pony-0.3/lib/pony.rb:67:in `transport_via_smtp'
        /var/lib/gems/1.8/gems/pony-0.3/lib/pony.rb:42:in `transport'
        /var/lib/gems/1.8/gems/pony-0.3/lib/pony.rb:15:in `mail'
        eee.rb:188:in `POST /email'
...

Dang! No email server. It is late and I do not want the hassle of setting up a full-blown mail server, so I:

sudo apt-get install ssmtp

That installs a simple sendmail replacement. After setting the mailhub option in /etc/ssmtp/ssmtp.conf, I can now receive emails from the site and actually send them onto myself:

127.0.0.1 - - [16/Aug/2009 02:47:00] "POST /email HTTP/1.0" 200 1076 6.1352
127.0.0.1 - - [16/Aug/2009 02:47:00] "GET /stylesheets/style.css HTTP/1.0" 304 - 0.0010
127.0.0.1 - - [16/Aug/2009 02:47:00] "GET /images/eee_corner.png HTTP/1.0" 304 - 0.0009

Apologies to anyone that tried to provide feedback today. Resending will work now!