Editorial
Servers
Configuring and managing the server that hosts your web site or web application can be a complex task, requiring some degree of familiarity with the operating system (typically Linux), shell scripting, HTTP server (such as Apache), application server (such as Mongrel), database server (such as MySQL), monitoring software, DNS, email servers, and a variety of other topics.The Rebuilding and Scaling of YellowPages.com
John Straw, chief software architect at YellowPages.com, gave an excellent talk at RailsConf about YellowPages' conversion to Rails. John's talk covered the scaling issues, but the talk was just as much about the process of successfully doing a big rewrite of a critical application at a large company. continue...
Using SSL in Rails Applications
If your web application manages any private information, you should be using SSL (https://) for pages where that information is entered or displayed. Fortunately, implementing SSL isn't too hard, once you know what you need to do. continue...
Articles
New Articles
from around the Web
- Passenger (mod_rails for Apache) launches
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Putting the pane back into deployment
Describes how to use a preferences pane for controlling Passenger on OS X
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Installing Sphinx on OS X Leopard
Building latest Sphinx on Mac OS 10.5.
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Ruby on Rails expert: Rails scales; Twitter shouldn't taint Ruby
Interview with Ezra Zygmuntowicz discussing where typical scaling problems really occur (in the database layer) and that the Twitter blame game is a red herring.
-
AUTO_INCREMENT MySQL
Work-around to problem of adding an alternate starting value for auto increment if IDs in your tables. Bug exists in MySQL.
- Running MySQL 5.1 on Mac OS X 10.5.2 [Client]
- Plugins - Seamless Database Pool
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Windows + Apache 2.0 + Ssl
Setting up Apache and SSL on Windows (2003)
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Apache+SSL Win32 HOWTO
Setting up Apache and SSL on a variety of Windows Operating Systems
- Announcing SQLite3/Ruby 1.2.0
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SQLite Tutorial
A general tutorial on using SQLite
Books
Related Books
Capacity Planning for Web Services: Metrics, Models, and Methods
Discusses capacity planning, performance analysis and modeling throughout a web application or service infrastructure.
List: $54.99 Amazon price: $37.08 Buy
Solaris(TM) Performance and Tools: DTrace and MDB Techniques for Solaris 10 and OpenSolaris (Solaris Series)
While the primary focus of the book is performance analysis on Solaris, this book’s coverage of DTrace, a very powerful low level a...
List: $59.99 Amazon price: $41.58 Buy
Building Scalable Web Sites: Building, scaling, and optimizing the next generation of web applications
List: $39.99 Amazon price: $26.39 Buy
Links
Links by Type
Documentation (15)
- Installing Sqlite3 on Windows for Rails
A guide for getting SQLite installed on windows. Important as the default Rails DB is currently set to sqlite3. - Emiller's Guide to Nginx Module Development
A thorough technical guide to writing nginx modules in C. - Rails performance tip - using YSlow
Handy guide looking at the results of the Yahoo yslow FireFox plugin and how to handle some of the performance issues using Ruby on Rails or web server (nginx) configuration tricks. - Phusion Passenger User's Guide
Official documentation for Passenger. Also included in the Gem files. - Apache 2.2 Documentation
- Rails Playground
Inexpensive Rails hosting - The Linux Documentation Project
The canonical source for Linux documentation on the web. - Thin - yet another web server
Home site of the Thin Rails application server. A extremely fast, lightweight replacement for mongrel. - Main - Nginx Wiki
Primary English documentation site for nginx. Contains many links to sample configuration files and other help. - Building Ruby, Rails, Subversion, Mongrel, and MySQL on Mac OS X
Step by step instructions for installing a full Ruby and Rails stack (with Mongrel and MySQL) on a Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) system. These instructions have you compile almost all of the code and install a copy of the applications into /usr/local. This process does not disturb Apple installed software. - OSX Leopard mysql gem for ruby
How to compile the mysql gem when using the Mac Ports install of MySQL and the native Mac OS X Leopard (10.5) Ruby and Rails (and gems) installs. - Robby on Rails : Installing Ruby on Rails and PostgreSQL on OS X, Third Edition
Walks through installing Ruby and Rails, as well as Postgres, via ports on Mac OS X Leopard. This is an alternative to using the default Leopard installation. - Log4r - Manual
Log4r is a comprehensive and flexible logging library written in Ruby for use in Ruby programs. It features a hierarchical logging system of any number of levels, custom level names, logger inheritance, multiple output destinations, execution tracing, custom formatting, thread safteyness, XML and YAML configuration, and more. - Backgroundrb
From the README: BackgrounDRb is a ruby job server and scheduler. It main intent is to be used with Ruby on Rails applications for offloading long running tasks. Since a rails application blocks while servicing a request it is best to move long running tasks off into a background process that is divorced from the http request/response cycle. - Mongrel
Mongrel Home Page
Links (1)
Groups (2)
- LinuxQuestions.org
Large forum for community support of Linux. A good place to ask questions. - Rails Deployment
Group for discussion of Rails application deployment.
Screencasts (4)
- Phusion Passenger
In-depth screencast on using Passenger. - Passenger in Development
How to use Passenger to host multiple applications on your development box. - Railscasts - Filtering Sensitive Logs
Are you accepting sensitive user data? Passwords, credit card numbers, etc. By default, Rails stores all submitted parameters in plain text in the logs. This episode will show you how to filter this sensitive input so it doesn’t show up in the log file. - Capistrano Concepts
FAQs & Resource Lists (2)
- SQLite3/Ruby FAQ
- MacOS Forge FAQ Ruby on Rails
Discusses the default installation of Ruby on Mac OS X, particularly Leopard’s default environment, how to override, etc.
Software (32)
- request-log-analyzer
Simple gem/script that helps analyze Rails log files for hotspots. - httperf
Httperf is a tool for measuring web server performance. It provides a flexible facility for generating various HTTP workloads and for measuring server performance. The focus of httperf is not on implementing one particular benchmark but on providing a robust, high-performance tool that facilitates the construction of both micro- and macro-level benchmarks. - Mac OS X Prefs Pane for Controlling Passenger Rails Setup
- Passenger Source Code
Full source for the open-source Passenger Apache module. - Phusion Passenger
Main site for Phusion’s Passenger Apache module, also known as mod_rails, which allows Ruby on Rails applications to be hosted without a separate application server. - Apache HTTP Server
The official site for the world’s most widely used web server. - CentOS Linux
A community version of Red Hat Enterprise. - Ubuntu Linux
- Debian Linux
- Fedora Linux
Fedora is the community version of Linux from Red Hat Inc., which also provides the commercial Red Hat Enterprise version. - Red Hat
The largest commercial supplier of Linux software, including Red Hat Enterprise and the free version, Fedora. - Directory of Linux distributions
- ActionMailer with optional TLS
github home of the action_mailer_optional_tls plugin. Use this plugin to connect to Google GMail from your Rails app. Pay attention to Googles TOU, as there are limits to the number of email messages you can send in one day. - WAPT - Web Application Load, Stress and Performance Testing
A Windows-based load and stress testing tool (commercial product). - Engine Yard Express
Engine Yard Express is an Engine Yard slice wrapped up to go. Useful for offline development work. Is a VMWare Image. - Firefox Addon: SQLite Manager
Manages any SQLite database on your computer. - Overview -- Phusion Passenger (a.k.a. mod_rails)
mod_rails is an Apache module that supports Rails applications without requiring a separate application server. This could be the biggest thing in Rails hosting since Mongrel. - SQLite Download Page
Links to precompiled binaries and source code for sqlite. - RubyForge: SQLite-Ruby: Project Info
Ruby bindings for SQLite - sqliteman: sqlite3 admin and devel tool
- mod_xsendfile
Apache 2 module that enables your application server to tell Apache when to send a static file. Use with Rails Xsendfile plugin. - SQLite JDBC Driver
You need a JDBC driver for SQLite if you want to use the Netbeans IDE database service UI. - Rails Analyzer
Doesn’t appear to have been updated in a while, but still lots of logging/analysis tools to check out. - Synaphy * Seesaw - High-Availability Mongrel Packs
- lighttpd fly light
- Virtualmin, Inc.
An open-source web-based web hosting control panel. - Webistrano - Capistrano deployment the easy way
Web-based control panel for deploying Rails applications. - ruby-style
Supervisor for Rails apps, updates TCP sockets to new code versions and restarts dead processes. - Mysql Replication Adapter
Rails database adapter that supports replicated MySQL databases. - RubyWorks Production Stack
Open-source production server stack for Ruby on Rails applications, assembled by ThoughtWorks. - BlogFish: Webistrano - Capistrano deployment the easy way
A web-based interface to Capistrano. Open source. - LiteSpeed Technologies
A web server alternative that claims twice the performance of Apache.
Presentation Slides (3)
- EXPLAIN Demystified: MySQL Conference & Expo - Co-presented by MySQL & O'Reilly Conferences, April 14 - 17, 2008, Santa Clara, CA
Good overview of what EXPLAIN is, how its results are calculated, and what all of the data is presents means. - Httperf Presentation
Presentation slides, recording, and quick reference for Httperf talk at www2007 conference. - Scaling Twitter
Directories (2)
- RailsHosting.org
Directory with reviews of Rails hosting companies. - Rails Hosting Info - Find Ruby on Rails hosting!
Directory of Rails hosting companies, sortable in various ways and with user reviews and ratings.
Hosted services (12)
- RailsCluster Ruby on Rails hosting
Rails hosting company in the Netherlands. - FiveRuns Manage
Hosted service for monitoring the performance of your Ruby on Rails application, as well as all the software components of your hosting infrastructure. - Planet Argon's "Rails Boxcar"
Mid-range Rails hosting. - Rails Machine
High-quality, mid-range Rails hosting. - Joyent
Mid-range (and up) Rails hosting. - Dreamhost
Inexpensive general-purpose web hosting company with some Rails support. - HostingRails
Low-cost shared and VPS Rails hosting. - Morph AppSpace
A turnkey hosted solution for deploying Rails applications. - Engine Yard
Engine Yard provides high-end Rails hosting. They are the hosting provider for BuildingWebApps.com. - Web Log Analysis for Amazon S3 - S3STAT
Provides detailed analysis of your Amazon Web Services S3 account and generates nightly reports in Webalizer format. - ADS Mantis Hosting for Ruby on Rails | Atlantic Dominion Solutions
- Heroku
General Sites (1)
- Linux Online
A community site for Linux information.
Blogs
Top Blogs
- jonobacon@home
- Linux Today
- MySQL Performance Blog
- BlogFish
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The Road to Enlightened Management
Blog from the developers of FiveRuns hosted system management application.
