#337 Capistrano Recipes pro

Mar 27, 2012 | 13 minutes | Tools, Deployment, Production

Get the most out of Capistrano by writing specific recipes with ERB templates. Here I show how to deploy to a blank VPS by running just a few Capistrano commands.

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Andy L over 12 years ago

Sometimes Chef just seems so heavy. Using Capistrano for provisioning would means one less tool to learn...

What problems does Chef solve that can't be addressed by Ryan's Capistrano approach? I know chef is good for large deployments, but for small/medium sized systems this Capistrano approach seems great.

bsutic over 12 years ago

This is my question too!
Does it make sense to invest time to learn another tool, when capistrano seems to be able to make any task on any number of servers?

Andy L over 12 years ago

Well I'll answer my own question. :-) I dug into Puppet last week - the tools it has for creating users, installing packages configuring systems etc would take a lot of time to rebuild from scratch in Capistrano. So I've become a Puppet user & believe its worth the time to learn. But this is a complicated tool, and it still seems like there is a need for a simpler deploy tool than Chef or Puppet.

Robert Williams over 12 years ago

Mixing capistrano and puppet/chef could be an option. As you said, creating users , installing packages and ensuring they stay installed are what tools like puppet/chef are made for. On the other hand configuring anything app specific i.e. nginx host, unicorn and so forth is easier using capistrano because it is more closely related to the application.

Allen Wyma over 8 years ago

I usually write a puppet file, then I can use capistrano to pull in the puppet file, install RVM, then ruby, then the puppet gem, then run the puppet config, then I run another cap command to actually deploy the app.

Puppet is nice because it's system agnostic in case you decide to change the distribution of linux.

Henk Meijer over 12 years ago

Wow, this is great. I usually use apache+passenger and a MySQL database. Tried to read up on the differences and benchmarks, but it's still not clear to me: is it just a matter of personal preference or is this setup (postgres, nginx, unicorn) really faster/better?

Bharat Ruparel over 12 years ago

Significantly so.

Mike Goggin over 12 years ago

I'm pretty curious myself. I'm getting ready to do some hard profiling on our multiple apps at work to try and find the best setup for performance.

Anyone have any benchmark information on using Unicorn/nginx over Passenger/Apache?

Carl Mercier over 12 years ago

Unicorn is significantly faster than Passenger. A well-tuned MySQL install performs similarly to a well-tuned Postgres install.

Nginx is generally much simpler to setup than Apache. It's also faster and less resource hungry.

Clemens Helm over 12 years ago

Apparently there’s only a significant advantage in performance if you’ve got fast clients, otherwise the opposite is the case: http://www.ruby-forum.com/topic/1822610

Philip Cunningham over 12 years ago

pg is transactional and just generally pretty nice.

Troy Murray over 12 years ago

Henk,

One think I learned, from watching a nodejs presentation actually (http://tv.adobe.com/watch/max-2011-develop/nodejs-and-you/) is that nginx is non-blocking whereas Apache is. The presenter covers this with a slide and illustration pretty early on, but nginx accepts the browser request, hands it to unicorn, then takes the next one whereas (he explains) Apache waits until the request is finished.

Mathieu Arnold over 12 years ago

Hum, just wondering, I don't know nginx much, but as the unicorn socket has the app name in it, shouldn't the upstream be something like unicorn_<%= application %> so that there can be more than one ?

Wayne over 12 years ago

Looks like it is:

https://github.com/railscasts/episode-337/blob/master/blog-after/config/recipes/templates/nginx_unicorn.erb

          erb
        
 upstream unicorn {
    server unix:/tmp/unicorn.<%= application %>.sock fail_timeout=0;
 }

David Blankenship over 12 years ago

I think he means the:

upstream unicorn {

upstream unicorn_<%= application %> {

Otherwise you'd have a lot of "upstream unicorns" loaded. I wondered this myself, and was going to test it. If no one else posts, I'll tell what I find out.

David Blankenship over 12 years ago

From what I can tell, you would need to change it to include the application name.

Mathieu Arnold over 12 years ago

Ok, thanks for testing that :-)

Mike Goggin over 12 years ago

I found this blog post on GitHub about their transition from nginx/haproxy/mongrel to nginx/unicorn. Sounds intriguing.

https://github.com/blog/517-unicorn

David Blankenship over 12 years ago

A heads up that if you add '--yes' to the end of the add-apt-repository lines, it will not prompt you to add the repo in the default install on Ubuntu 11.10.

Troy Murray over 12 years ago

David,

Excellent, thank you for that.

David Blankenship over 12 years ago

For some reason when it runs the bootstrap it prompts for a sudo password since each command in the script is attempting to sudo, but does not accept my input when typing. (In fact, in my zsh term it displays the password as I type) Has anyone else had this issue? I enter it at the beginning as Ryan does when prompted; I would think it would be passed through. Ubuntu is the default server install in my case.

[xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx] sh -c 'rbenv bootstrap-ubuntu-11-10' [out :: xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx] [sudo] password for deployer:

Herman verschooten over 12 years ago

I have the same issue, couldn't resolve it.
So I ran the command manually and commented it out.

mklnz over 12 years ago

It is because the script is using it's own sudo command:
https://github.com/fesplugas/rbenv-installer/blob/master/bin/rbenv-bootstrap-ubuntu-11-10

Capistrano has its own sudo helper which types in the password for you. Normally you can't pass input directly.

I just copied rbenv's bootstrap file and made it into one line so I can bootstrap myself.

          ruby
        
# Manual bootstrap
run "#{sudo} apt-get -y install build-essential zlib1g-dev libssl-dev libreadline-gplv2-dev"

Herman verschooten about 12 years ago

I just ran into this problem again..

I ended up changing the script in recipes/rbenv.rb, the line that runs the bootstrap to:

run %q{sed "s/sudo/sudo -p 'sudo password: '/g" $HOME/.rbenv/plugins/rbenv-installer/bin/rbenv-} + rbenv_bootstrap + " | bash"

I change the sudo to the format capistrano wants and run it through bash.

Jens about 12 years ago

Thanks, that helped a lot!

Thomas Brewer about 12 years ago

Use visudo and edit the sudoers file. Make sure the admin or sudo group, which ever your deploy user is in, has the NOPASSWD option:

%sudo ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD:ALL

Charl Fourie over 11 years ago

You can add the following method to rbenv.rb:

          ruby
        
  def rbenv(command)
    run "rbenv #{command}", :pty => true do |ch, stream, data|
      if data =~ /\[sudo\].password.for/
        ch.send_data(Capistrano::CLI.password_prompt("Password:") + "\n")
      else
        Capistrano::Configuration.default_io_proc.call(ch, stream, data)
      end
    end
  end

Then you can just use the method to invoke rbenv wherever you need to ...

          ruby 
        
    rbenv "#{rbenv_bootstrap}"
    rbenv "install #{ruby_version}"
    rbenv "global #{ruby_version}"
    run "gem install bundler --no-ri --no-rdoc"

Yuki Hariguchi about 11 years ago

good!
thanks!

bsutic over 12 years ago

Hi guys,
does anyone know how to automate mysql installation?
I'm stuck when that blue screen pops up and asks for mysql password!

I found great resource here about streaming data from a capistrano run helper: http://errtheblog.com/posts/19-streaming-capistrano

Carl Mercier over 12 years ago

Here's what you're looking for: https://github.com/cmer/shoestrap-example/blob/master/helpers/default#L162

gummybears over 12 years ago

You can use a preseed file to automate the mysql installation, Ubuntu (10.10)

you can use something like (not tested)

run "#{sudo} debconf-set-selections /tmp/mysql_preseed"
run "#{sudo} apt-get -y install mysql-server"

The preseed file itself (you can run this through erb) or replace
the erb code with your mysql password:
mysql-server-5.1 mysql-server/<%= lv_password %> <%= lv_password %>
mysql-server-5.1 mysql-server/<%= lv_password %> <%= lv_password %>
mysql-server-5.1 mysql-server/start_on_boot boolean true

I switched from capistrano to sprinkle, because sprinkle can be programmed to verify the deployment and I don't have to duplicate
capistrano recipes for each Rails project.

gummybears over 12 years ago

Made a mistake with the preseed file. Should read

mysql-server-5.1 mysql-server/root_password_again password <%= lv_password %>
mysql-server-5.1 mysql-server/root_password password <%= lv_password %>
mysql-server-5.1 mysql-server/start_on_boot boolean true

bsutic over 12 years ago

Hi Carl, gummybears - thx for help.

In the end I found the solution for installing mysql by sending the password via capistrano when the blue screen appears- its quite simple. Here is the solution:

          ruby
        
# capistrano task for installing mysql
run "#{sudo} apt-get -y install mysql-server" do |channel, stream, data|
  # prompts for mysql root password (when blue screen appears)
  channel.send_data("#{mysql_root_password}\n\r") if data =~ /password/
end

Also, for those that are interested - user creation can also be automated via capistrano (that is the only thing Ryan did manually in this episode). You can check that at this link.
It's a bit complicated, but in the end you don't even have to ssh to machine prior to running capistrano recipes.

I hope this is useful to someone :)

Kyle Welsby about 12 years ago

Thanks this worked very nicely. :)

Carl Mercier over 12 years ago

I recently released a very simple alternative to Chef if anyone's interested: https://github.com/cmer/shoestrap

Micah Woods over 12 years ago

Ryan,

Awesome episode, would you suggest using this approach to setup vagrant for development?

Clemens Kofler over 12 years ago

A little note: Instead of using the set_default method here (or Capistrano's own _cset), a similar effect can be achieved by using the second parameter to the fetch method like so:

          ruby
        
directories_to_create = fetch(:directories_to_create, [])

If I now use set(:directories_to_create, Dir[...]) that gets used, otherwise it uses the second parameter as the default (in this case just an empty array).

Paul Wong over 12 years ago

Has anyone been able to get the nginx :install recipe to work on Debian Linux? There is no add-apt-repository command available.

Nathan Le Ray over 12 years ago

You have to install the python-software-properties package ;)

Chris Saylor over 12 years ago

Ryan allowed me to Gemify these recipes. Check it out here.

I added a few of my own changes such as setting up a firewall, setting the timezone to UTC and a task for tailing the logs. I plan on adding the Apache, Passenger and MySQL recipes from episode 335 as well.

twice over 12 years ago

I'm still trying to wrap my head around these concepts. Of the lot,I think your gem looks much more approachable. Would it be in any way possible to run this against a local vagrant install?

twice over 12 years ago

Ok, I'm getting there but now the problem is that it requires a password for the deployer.

Marlon Moyer over 12 years ago

hmmmm...I just put up a repo with scripts that run without the needing sudo on the deploy user, but mine aren't gemified.

https://github.com/mcmoyer/chef-istrano

Might have to follow suit and gemify them...that really makes them handy

Yuichi Nakano over 12 years ago

Great episode, thanks Ryan.

One thing, maybe because I'm not familier with Capistrano, I'm curious about what will happen if I run "deploy:install" task twice, for example, in order to add a new server.
I assume Capistrano will try to install everything both to the new one and which has had those already.

If so, will it be OK(no problems as its consequence)? or otherwise is there anyway to avoid it, such like running a task on a specific server?

Chris Saylor over 12 years ago

You can limit what servers will execute a task by passing a HOSTS environment variable like this:

cap HOSTS=new.server.com deploy:setup

Yuichi Nakano over 12 years ago

Thanks Chris, now things look clear to me:)

Alex Aguilar over 12 years ago

Ryan thanks for the excellent deployment series.

I'm attempting to deploy to Linode following these recipes and get the following error when I try to cold deploy:

          ruby
        
failed: "sh -c 'if [ -d /home/deployer/apps/alexapp/shared/cached-copy ]; then cd 
/home/deployer/apps/alexapp/shared/cached-copy && git fetch -q origin && git 
fetch --tags -q origin && git reset -q --hard 
bdfebfaa7b77893a800afb9ccf85d66296ed15e0 && git clean -q -d -x -f; else git 
clone -q git@github.com:alexagui/alexapp.git 
/home/deployer/apps/alexapp/shared/cached-copy && cd 
/home/deployer/apps/alexapp/shared/cached-copy && git checkout -q -b deploy 
bdfebfaa7b77893a800afb9ccf85d66296ed15e0; fi'" on 50.116.34.XXX

Suggestions in right direction will be greatly appreciated.

Thomas Brewer about 12 years ago

My guess is you are probably not using your id_rsa.pub key for the remote git repo. I had a different key set for a repo and got the same error. All I did was add my id_rsa.pub key to the remote git repo and everything worked fine. I think there is a way to also do ssh-add, but I was less than successful with getting that to work.

Tyler Shaw over 12 years ago

About once a month you more than make up for the $9. Very impressed good sir, very impressed. Thank you for everything!

paniwani over 12 years ago

I really like the Capistrano recipes approach to deployment. But as configured, the deployment only works from the master branch on the github repo. What steps would need to be taken to deploy from another branch, i.e. a staging branch, onto a staging app on the same linode?

Fayimora Femi-Balogun over 12 years ago

You can set the branch. To deploy from a branch called stage, I would do set :branch, "stage"

Aditya Sanghi over 12 years ago

Just in case someone is interested to know, in Ubuntu versions 11.10 (Oneiric Ocelot) and onwards the "admin" group is not going to be provided by default. The power that be are favouring the "sudo" group instead of "admin" group. If you're upgrading from a lower version, your "admin" group will persist but on a fresh install "admin" group will be missing.

So if you get an error that "admin" group does not exist, simply replace it with "sudo".

adduser deployer --ingroup sudo

Dom over 12 years ago

Thank you, I was wondering why the group didn't exist.

Eddie Du almost 12 years ago

If you check cat /etc/sudoers you might find that the "admin" group is there. In that case just run groupadd admin and continue as usual.

Ellin Tolstov over 12 years ago

I use cap ryan:bates to solve all my problems :)
Thank you!

Breno Santos Salgado over 12 years ago

Do I really need an external git repository for this?

I'm not being able to find decent resources on a setup with only my machine and my vps...

Breno Santos Salgado over 12 years ago

can't get it to work...

I'm not using a clean clone of this, but when installing nginx it will simply stop waiting the user to press [ENTER] and... well, nothing more..

** [out :: ec2-23-22-22-218.compute-1.amazonaws.com] Stable
** [out :: ec2-23-22-22-218.compute-1.amazonaws.com]
** [out :: ec2-23-22-22-218.compute-1.amazonaws.com] Stable version of nginx.
** [out :: ec2-23-22-22-218.compute-1.amazonaws.com]
** [out :: ec2-23-22-22-218.compute-1.amazonaws.com] More info: https://launchpad.net/~nginx/+archive/stable
** [out :: ec2-23-22-22-218.compute-1.amazonaws.com]
** [out :: ec2-23-22-22-218.compute-1.amazonaws.com] Press [ENTER] to continue or ctrl-c to cancel adding it

I tried getting dropbox through capistrano there too but it doesnt seem to be possible too because I'd need to stop dropboxd daemon after linking the accounts, doesnt seem to be possible...

the screencast was great... I`m not very confident in the approach of using it to set up the VPS tho... it seems anything that will provide a prompt that's not to input text will just stop the scripts forever

or I could be doing something wrong, were you guys able to get the cap deploy:install to work?

claudesoft over 12 years ago

me 2, same problem

Breno Santos Salgado over 12 years ago

here's the code I used on the task to get it to work!(found it around github..)

          ruby
        
task :install, roles: :web do
    run "#{sudo} add-apt-repository ppa:nginx/stable",:pty => true do |ch, stream, data|
      if data =~ /Press.\[ENTER\].to.continue/
        #prompt, and then send the response to the remote process
        ch.send_data(Capistrano::CLI.password_prompt("Press enter to continue:") + "\n")
      else
        #use the default handler for all other text
        Capistrano::Configuration.default_io_proc.call(ch,stream,data)
      end
    end

    run "#{sudo} apt-get -y update"
    run "#{sudo} apt-get -y install nginx"
  end

acooperman over 12 years ago

Nice man that works a treat

This worked for postgre on Ubuntu 12.04

          
        
  task :install, roles: :db, only: {primary: true} do
    run "#{sudo} add-apt-repository ppa:pitti/postgresql",:pty => true do |ch, stream, data|
         if data =~ /Press.\[ENTER\].to.continue/
        #prompt, and then send the response to the remote process
        ch.send_data(Capistrano::CLI.password_prompt("Press enter to continue:") + "\n")
      else
        #use the default handler for all other text
        Capistrano::Configuration.default_io_proc.call(ch,stream,data)
      end
    end


    run "#{sudo} apt-get -y update"
    run "#{sudo} apt-get -y install postgresql libpq-dev"
  end

adam-pl almost 12 years ago

This code repeats 3 times. I've made press_enter method:

          ruby
        
def press_enter( ch, stream, data)
  if data =~ /Press.\[ENTER\].to.continue/
    # prompt, and then send the response to the remote process
    ch.send_data( "\n")
  else
    # use the default handler for all other text
    Capistrano::Configuration.default_io_proc.call( ch, stream, data)
  end
end

I don't like to press Enter every time, so I've used ch.send_data( "\n") code.

Then you can use it like that:

          ruby
        
run "#{sudo} add-apt-repository ppa:pitti/postgresql", pty: true do |ch, stream, data|
  press_enter( ch, stream, data)
end

Faraz Yashar about 12 years ago

Just add y...

Eddie Du almost 12 years ago

FYI: If you look in the source, Capistrano::CLI.ui just links to a Highline object. So you can do Capistrano::CLI.ui.ask("Enter something") instead of CLI.password_prompt :)

Charl Fourie over 11 years ago

Add the following method to base.rb ...

          ruby
        
def add_apt_repository(repo)
  run "#{sudo} add-apt-repository #{repo}", :pty => true do |ch, stream, data|
    if data =~ /Press.\[ENTER\].to.continue/
      ch.send_data("\n")
    else
      Capistrano::Configuration.default_io_proc.call(ch, stream, data)
    end
  end
end

Now use it in all recipes (3 in the example code) where 'add-apt-repository' is being used...

          ruby
        
  add_apt_repository 'ppa:nginx/stable'

brucepom over 12 years ago

Thanks for for the screencast Ryan and thanks everyone for the helpful comments. I was able to deploy to AWS EC2 Ubuntu 11.10 (ami-baba68d3) using this script with a few minor changes.

A. Not sure if this is good practice but I used the default ubuntu user rather than creating a new user with admin rights. Couldn't get it to work with a new user, I think because AWS relies on keypair rather than password authentication for ssh. I suspect there is a better solution here, I'm not an expert on this.

B. In deploy.rb I used ssh_options to specify the location of my AWS keypair file:

          ruby
        
server "ec2-23-20-247-239.compute-1.amazonaws.com", :web, :app, :db, primary: true
ssh_options[:keys] = [File.join(ENV['HOME'], '.ec2', 'ec2-keypair')] # Path to your aws keypair on your local machine

C. Added the solution from Breno Santos Salgado (above) in postgres, nginx and nodejs recipes to prevent the deployment getting stuck when the system asks you to "Press [enter] to continue".

D. Changed Ubuntu version number on line two of rbenv.rb for the version of Ubuntu I used:

          ruby
        
set_default :rbenv_bootstrap, "bootstrap-ubuntu-11-10"

Andaleeb Kazi over 12 years ago

Thanks Ryan ....Anyone have a recipe for rmagik or imagemagik?

Dom over 12 years ago

This worked for me on Ubuntu 12.04:

          ruby
        
namespace :imagemagick do
  desc "Install the latest release of ImageMagick and the MagickWand Dev Library"
  task :install, roles: :app do
    run "#{sudo} apt-get -y update"
    run "#{sudo} apt-get -y install imagemagick libmagickwand-dev"
  end
  after "deploy:install", "imagemagick:install"
end

George Cheng over 12 years ago

So I discovered an odd problem with using Capistrano::CLI.password_prompt "PostgreSQL Password: "

I spent most of the day trying to figure out why I was getting this error
FATAL: password authentication failed for user "DBuser"
at the bundle exec rake RAILS_ENV=production db:migrate
stage of my cap deploy:cold.

Turns out that when I use special characters when prompted for the db user password during
cap deploy:setup, the cold deploy fails. But if I use a password without any special characters then the cold deploy works.

I don't know why this would be the case, so if anyone has any ideas as to why special characters can't be used, I'd love to be enlightened.

Jason Johnstone over 11 years ago

Thanks for mentioning this. I ran into the exact same thing.

Łukasz Bieniek over 12 years ago

Thanks Ryan, that's brilliant!

Peter Washburn over 12 years ago

So, I've been struggling to figure out what is failing.. Everything installs and setups up fine...code is deployed to the correct location. Both unicorn and nginx are started, but when I hit the site all I get is the Welcome to nginx screen. I even doubled checked that the default site for nginx was gone...any ideas where I could look to figure out what is happening?

Flo about 12 years ago

You forgot to delete the default site from nginx.
There are two options:
1. Do it manually:
the commands you have to enter:
ssh_to_your_server:
ssh deployer(or_which_user_u_have_on_server)@server_ip

commands_on_server:
sudo rm /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default
sudo service nginx restart

to autostart it when server restarts:
sudo update-rd.d unicorn_yourapp_name

Or compare your nginx.rb script to (at minute: 7:27):
nginx.rb from RyanB

if its correct run: cap deploy:install

Denis Savitsky about 12 years ago

Should also have "set :normalize_asset_timestamps, false" in deploy.rb

Daniel Lorenz about 12 years ago

Hi. Thanks for another awesome podcast. I have a task to solve. I need different configurations in "/config/recipes/templates/nginx_unicorn.rb" per host. How can I use different variables for e.g. server_name?

Rohit Mishra almost 12 years ago

If you are getting a gem not installed error, then do checkout the railscasts on zero downtime deployment. You need to send a USR2 signal and set preload_app=true. More details here at stackoverflow

adam-pl almost 12 years ago

Today I had a big problem with deploying on remote machine. Many hours spent on problem with hanging Capitrano.
When I did cap deploy:install all required packages were installed properly except one - ruby 1.9.3-p327.

Capistrano hangs forever on executing rbenv install 1.9.3-p327 with message Installing ruby-1.9.3-p327....

I've used second ssh connection with top running for checking numer of users logged in. I've detected that message Installing ruby-1.9.3-p327... still exists after number of logged in users decrease from 2 into 1.

What is the reason? SSH timeout session breaks connection.

How to solve the problem? My solution is:
1) Just edit file /etc/ssh/sshd_config and add following lines:

          config
        
  ClientAliveInterval 18
  ClientAliveCountMax 100

Parameter ClientAliveInterval should have very small number to make pinging very often.
18*100 = 1800 seconds means 30 minutes of session timeout (enough I think).
2) Then restart ssh service:

          terminal
        
sudo service ssh restart

3) Try to deploy:

          terminal
        
cap deploy:install

It works now for me :-)

If you not, additionally try to edit file /etc/ssh/ssh_config:

          settings
        
  ServerAliveInterval 18
  ServerAliveCountMax 100

Then restart ssh service.
I hope it will be helpfull for somebody.

adam-pl almost 12 years ago

SSH Timeouts - avoid ssh disconnection with Capistrano:

1) Add file config/recipes/ssh.rb

          ruby
        
load "config/recipes/base"

namespace :ssh do
  desc "Setup long timeouts for ssh connection"
  task :install, roles: :app do
    sshd = <<-BASHRC
  ClientAliveInterval 60
  ClientAliveCountMax 1200
    BASHRC
    cmd = %Q{grep -R "ClientAliveInterval" /etc/ssh/sshd_config}
    content = capture( %Q{bash -c '#{cmd}' || echo "false"}).strip
    if content == 'false'
      put sshd, '/tmp/sshd'
      run 'cat /etc/ssh/sshd_config /tmp/sshd > /tmp/sshd.tmp'
      run 'rm /tmp/sshd'
      run "#{sudo} mv /tmp/sshd.tmp /etc/ssh/sshd_config"
    else
      run 'echo "FILE /etc/ssh/sshd_config" IS ALREADY UPDATED!'
    end
  end
  after "deploy:install", "ssh:install"
end

2) Edit config/deploy.rb file and add:

          ruby
        
load "config/recipes/ssh"

It works when you call:

          terminal
        
cap deploy:install

          terminal
        
cap ssh:install

NOTE 1 - you can call cap ssh:install many times with no worries that file /etc/ssh/sshd_config includes string ClientAliveInterval 60 many times.
It's safe because following code:

          ruby 
        
    cmd = %Q{grep -R "ClientAliveInterval" /etc/ssh/sshd_config}
    content = capture( %Q{bash -c '#{cmd}' || echo "false"}).strip
    if content == 'false'
      # Here we know that we must do setup
    else
      # Here we know that setup is already done
    end

NOTE 2 - Additionally I've made the same kind of protection in file config/recipes/rbenv.erb. So now I can call cap deploy:install many times (well, it's not recommended but sometimes it's usefull if you tests deploying process many times).

coredevs over 11 years ago

I'm still getting problems with rbenv just hanging on "Installing ruby-1.9.3-p429...", I've never had any problems before, or had to alter any SSH timeouts. Any ideas?

Régis Hanol almost 12 years ago

          /config/recipes/base.rb 
        
def template(from, to)
    erb = File.read(File.expand_path("../templates/#{from}"), __FILE__)
    put ERB.new(erb).result(binding), to
end

should be:

          /config/recipes/base.rb 
        
def template(from, to)
    erb = File.read(File.expand_path("../templates/#{from}", __FILE__))
    put ERB.new(erb).result(binding), to
end

Eduardo de Oliveira Hernandes almost 12 years ago

Thanks :D this help me.

Thomas Vollath almost 12 years ago

I ran in to problems with the rbenv install on Ubuntu 12.04. I changed the bootstrap line to version 12-04 and it still didn't work. I fixed it like this:

          rbenv.rb (remove line 2)
        
set_default :rbenv_bootstrap, "bootstrap-ubuntu-10-04"

          rbenv.rb (remove line 20)
        
run "rbenv #{rbenv_bootstrap}"

          base.rb (update line 14)
        
run "#{sudo} apt-get -y install python-software-properties build-essential"

Dominik Masur over 11 years ago

With Ubuntu 12.10 you need to install software-properties-common because add-apt-repository is not in python-software-properties.

You get the following message (for our googlers):

          bash
        
bash: add-apt-repository: command not found

Mark over 11 years ago

Anyone else having a problem when running cap deploy:setup and getting a chmod error :

failed: "sh -c 'chmod g+w /home/deployer/apps/blog /home/deployer/apps/blog/releases /home/deployer/apps/memDownDash/shared /home/deployer/apps/blog/shared/system /home/deployer/apps/blog/shared/log /home/deployer/apps/blog/shared/pids'" on 192.168.119.131

chmod:
"changing permissions of `/home/deployer/apps/blog/releases'
** [out :: 192.168.119.131] : Operation not permitted"

chmod:** [out :: 192.168.119.131] changing permissions of `/home/deployer/apps/blog'
** [out :: 192.168.119.131] : Operation not permitted

chmod:
** [out :: 192.168.119.131] changing permissions of `/home/deployer/apps/xxx/shared'
** [out :: 192.168.119.131] : Operation not permitted

chmod:
** [out :: 192.168.119.131] changing permissions of `/home/deployer/apps/blog/shared/system'
** [out :: 192.168.119.131] : Operation not permitted

chmod: changing permissions of `/home/deployer/apps/blog/shared/log': Operation not permitted

chmod: changing permissions of `/home/deployer/apps/blog/shared/pids': Operation not permitted

I setup a user in the admin group, and have "set :use_sudo, false"

Greg Blass almost 11 years ago

I'm getting this one as well. Does anyone know how to address this?

I'm trying to run:

task :set_file_permissions do
run "chmod -R 777 #{release_path}/public/uploads"
run "chmod -R 0666 #{release_path}/log/production.log"
end

Getting the same errors as above.

Nelson Kelem over 11 years ago

While this tutorial is awesome the way it is, it falls flat at one thing that is more than not going to happen to you

          ruby
        
Hosting Multiple Apps on the same VPS

Please address Capistrano

Initial Server-wide software deploy:install that will not have to repeat for every app. Ex. nginx, postgresql installation tasks etc
Initial Server-wide deploy:setup (configuration) tasks
App specific deploy:cold (configuration) tasks

@ryanb could you see how to do that please.

tennantje over 11 years ago

this might help you out https://github.com/j10io/sample_capistrano_app/ it's based on this tutorial as well as the comments in this thread.

Matteo Latini over 11 years ago

In an act of shameless self promotion, I'd like you to promote http://pulsar.nebulab.it

You can use it to organize capistrano recipes and configurations. Maybe you'll find it useful.

JPN over 11 years ago

It looks like shortly after this podcast was made, they added deploy:cleanup by default:

https://github.com/capistrano/capistrano/wiki/Capistrano-Tasks#deploycleanup

So need to call it explicitly anymore.

Chris Dekonink over 11 years ago

Nice railscast! One of my favorites. Your site is the best. I am using this webcast as the basis for deploying servers. Thanks again

Thomas Le about 11 years ago

Maybe a silly question. I am using ubuntu 12.04 so the bootstrap for 10.04 just isn't needed. right? :) So far I just skipped that part because I figured it isn't needed. I just wanted to make sure I am not missing something by not using it.

Ismael Gimenez almost 11 years ago

hi! has someone make this work with rails 4 and capistrano 3.0?

Yuki Hariguchi over 10 years ago

This is helpful.

http://www.talkingquickly.co.uk/2014/01/deploying-rails-apps-to-a-vps-with-capistrano-v3/

Christopher Slade over 10 years ago

I didn't get it working with just Capistrano 3, because Capistrano doesn't want to use the sudo command a lot, and now recommends passwordless sudo. However, I made it work by provisioning with Sunzi. I made a how to video you can follow.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1iTmfnKS7Q