We are currently using the following stack :-

1. Rails 1.2.3
2. Ruby 1.8.6
3. MySQL 5.0.x
4. Mongrel Cluster 1.0.5
5. Capistrano 2.5
6. Monit 4.10.1

I won't go into how the rails stack itself was installed, we can deal with that later I suppose. Monit itself was very simple to install.  The basic procedure I used was borrowed from RailsMachine's Monitoring mongrel and other processes article.

The Procedure

All I had to do was login to my server as root, and type the following ...

###################################################

yum install flex

wget http://www.tildeslash.com/monit/dist/monit-4.10.1.tar.gz
tar zxvf monit-*
cd monit-*
./configure<br />make && make install

####################################################

Once that is finished, it's a matter of configuring just a few items ...

First off, you'll need to have a monitrc file available somewhere that monit goes looking for it.  

In my case, since I wanted a system-wide default settings I used a copy of the RailsMachine provided 

file and renamed it '/etc/monitrc'. I've set it up for monitoring a Mongrel Cluster of 5 Mongrels, 

the BackgrounDrb process that in effect does my housekeeping chores, and various other processes that 

participate in the servers duties ...

####################################################

set daemon 60
set mailserver localhost

# change the notification send and receive addresses to suitable ones for your domain
set mail-format { from: app@onthemap.ie }
set alert support@onthemap.ie

# pick a random port between 8000 and 10000 if you want access without ssh tunnelling

# stick in the username and password of a user on your system that should have access to monit
set httpd port 9001 and
    allow user_to_allow:password_of_user_to_allow

# ========================
# = YourApp Production =
# ========================

# Set the correct paths to your pid files. You will need one stanza like this for each mongrel, with the correct port number.
check process otm_mongrel_8000
     with pidfile /var/run/mongrel_cluster/otm.8000.pid
     start program = "/bin/env PATH=/usr/local/bin:$PATH mongrel_rails cluster::start -C /etc/mongrel_cluster/otm.conf --clean --only 8000"
     stop program = "/bin/env PATH=/bin:/usr/local/bin:$PATH mongrel_rails cluster::stop -C /etc/mongrel_cluster/otm.conf -f --clean --only 8000"

     if totalmem is greater than 60.0 MB for 5 cycles then restart
     if cpu is greater than 50% for 2 cycles then alert
     if cpu is greater than 80% for 3 cycles then restart
     if loadavg(5min) greater than 10 for 8 cycles then restart
     if 3 restarts within 5 cycles then timeout         

     if failed port 8000 protocol http
         with timeout 10 seconds
         then restart
     group mongrel-otm

check process otm_mongrel_8001
     with pidfile /var/run/mongrel_cluster/otm.8001.pid
     start program = "/bin/env PATH=/usr/local/bin:$PATH mongrel_rails cluster::start -C /etc/mongrel_cluster/otm.conf --clean --only 8001"
     stop program = "/bin/env PATH=/bin:/usr/local/bin:$PATH mongrel_rails cluster::stop -C /etc/mongrel_cluster/otm.conf -f --clean --only 8001"

     if totalmem is greater than 60.0 MB for 5 cycles then restart
     if cpu is greater than 50% for 2 cycles then alert
     if cpu is greater than 80% for 3 cycles then restart
     if loadavg(5min) greater than 10 for 8 cycles then restart
     if 3 restarts within 5 cycles then timeout         

     if failed port 8001 protocol http
         with timeout 10 seconds
         then restart
     group mongrel-otm

check process otm_mongrel_8002
     with pidfile /var/run/mongrel_cluster/otm.8002.pid
     start program = "/bin/env PATH=/usr/local/bin:$PATH mongrel_rails cluster::start -C /etc/mongrel_cluster/otm.conf --clean --only 8002"
     stop program = "/bin/env PATH=/bin:/usr/local/bin:$PATH mongrel_rails cluster::stop -C /etc/mongrel_cluster/otm.conf -f --clean --only 8002"

     if totalmem is greater than 60.0 MB for 5 cycles then restart
     if cpu is greater than 50% for 2 cycles then alert
     if cpu is greater than 80% for 3 cycles then restart
     if loadavg(5min) greater than 10 for 8 cycles then restart
     if 3 restarts within 5 cycles then timeout         

     if failed port 8002 protocol http
         with timeout 10 seconds
         then restart
     group mongrel-otm

check process otm_mongrel_8003
     with pidfile /var/run/mongrel_cluster/otm.8003.pid
     start program = "/bin/env PATH=/usr/local/bin:$PATH mongrel_rails cluster::start -C /etc/mongrel_cluster/otm.conf --clean --only 8003"
     stop program = "/bin/env PATH=/bin:/usr/local/bin:$PATH mongrel_rails cluster::stop -C /etc/mongrel_cluster/otm.conf -f --clean --only 8003"

     if totalmem is greater than 60.0 MB for 5 cycles then restart
     if cpu is greater than 50% for 2 cycles then alert
     if cpu is greater than 80% for 3 cycles then restart
     if loadavg(5min) greater than 10 for 8 cycles then restart
     if 3 restarts within 5 cycles then timeout         

     if failed port 8003 protocol http
         with timeout 10 seconds
         then restart
     group mongrel-otm

check process otm_mongrel_8004
     with pidfile /var/run/mongrel_cluster/otm.8004.pid
     start program = "/bin/env PATH=/usr/local/bin:$PATH mongrel_rails cluster::start -C /etc/mongrel_cluster/otm.conf --clean --only 8004"
     stop program = "/bin/env PATH=/bin:/usr/local/bin:$PATH mongrel_rails cluster::stop -C /etc/mongrel_cluster/otm.conf -f --clean --only 8004"

     if totalmem is greater than 60.0 MB for 5 cycles then restart
     if cpu is greater than 50% for 2 cycles then alert
     if cpu is greater than 80% for 3 cycles then restart
     if loadavg(5min) greater than 10 for 8 cycles then restart
     if 3 restarts within 5 cycles then timeout         

     if failed port 8004 protocol http
         with timeout 10 seconds
         then restart
     group mongrel-otm

# the BackgrounDrb server
check process otm_backgroundrb_11006
     with pidfile /var/www/apps/otm/current/tmp/pids/backgroundrb_11006.pid
     start program = "/bin/env PATH=/bin:/usr/local/bin:$PATH /var/www/apps/otm/current/admin/backgroundrb start"
     stop program = "/bin/env PATH=/bin:/usr/local/bin:$PATH /var/www/apps/otm/current/admin/backgroundrb stop"

     if totalmem is greater than 60.0 MB for 5 cycles then restart
     if cpu is greater than 50% for 2 cycles then alert
     if cpu is greater than 80% for 3 cycles then restart
     if 3 restarts within 5 cycles then timeout         

     if failed port 11006 protocol http
         with timeout 10 seconds
         then restart
     group backgroundrb-otm

# ===================
# = Other Processes =
# ===================
check device rootfs with path /
  if space usage > 90% then alert  # this happens when you have a lot of data
  if inode usage > 90% then alert  # this happens when you have a lot of small files

check process sshd with pidfile /var/run/sshd.pid
   start program  "/etc/init.d/sshd start"
   stop program  "/etc/init.d/sshd stop"
   if failed port 22 protocol ssh with timeout 30 seconds then restart
   if 5 restarts within 5 cycles then timeout

check process mysql with pidfile /var/run/mysqld/mysqld.pid
   group database
   start program = "/etc/init.d/mysqld start"
   stop program = "/etc/init.d/mysqld stop"
   if failed host localhost port 3306 then restart
   if 5 restarts within 5 cycles then timeout

check process httpd with pidfile /var/run/httpd.pid
   group web
   start program  "/etc/init.d/httpd start"
   stop program  "/etc/init.d/httpd stop"
   if failed host localhost port 80 protocol http with timeout 15 seconds then restart
   if cpu is greater than 60% for 2 cycles then alert
   if cpu > 80% for 5 cycles then restart
   #if children > 250 then restart
   if loadavg(5min) greater than 10 for 8 cycles then alert
   if 3 restarts within 5 cycles then timeout

check process sendmail with pidfile /var/run/sendmail.pid
   group mail
   start program = "/etc/init.d/sendmail start"
   stop  program = "/etc/init.d/sendmail stop"
   if failed port 25 protocol smtp with timeout 45 seconds then restart
   if 5 restarts within 5 cycles then timeout

####################################################

Save the file contents, and then setup the correct ownership and

permissions for it as well, and then go ahead and start it up ...

####################################################

chmod +x /etc/init.d/monit

chkconfig monit on

service monit start # or stop or restart

####################################################

Teething Issues

There was some teething issues, especially with the mongrel cluster, and to a lesser extent with the BackgrounDrb server ... and they both came down to environmental issues.  Essentially, when monit runs, it has it seems a really limited environment.  It doesn't even have "/bin" in the default path it uses.  The mongrel cluster basically wouldn't start because it needed to know where my mongrel software was located.  The start and stop commands needed some environmental params injected before anything useful happened.

In my case, I installed the mongrel_cluster software into /usr/local/bin ... so my 'start' and 'stop' commands needed to augmented as per ...

####################################################

start program = "/bin/env PATH=/usr/local/bin:$PATH mongrel_rails cluster::start -C /etc/mongrel_cluster/otm.conf --clean --only 8000"
stop program = "/bin/env PATH=/bin:/usr/local/bin:$PATH mongrel_rails cluster::stop -C /etc/mongrel_cluster/otm.conf -f --clean --only 8000"

####################################################

Once the environments were primed, the mongrels were successfully being controlled by monit without an issue.  The same thing was true for BackgrounDrb.

Current State of Things

I'm quite happy.  Up until now, I did see an occassional failure from the mongrel cluster.  Something would stick, the process would die, and in some cases even leave behind it's old PID file.

Since I've monit looking after things, it seems to be smart enough to not only monitor the cluster, and the other processes I've asked it to, but also to take decisive action, and after it's done ... to send me an email about it !.  You can't ask for much more than that.

OK ... there is one more thing that would be handy ... and although I've had one attempt at getting it to work, I'm still struggling with it ... and that is to be able to login over the web and to directly access the monit process via it's httpd service.

The docs say, that I should be able to point my browser to http://onthemap.ie:9001 and get direct access to monit.  Yes, there are a few security mechanisms that need be in place for this to be viable ... and I've gotten my hosting provider to open up a hole in the firewall for me to access that port, but no joy ... atleast not yet ;0))

In any case, I went from having no automated monitoring to pretty much a working automated watchdog type of system within the space of a few hours ... and that folks ... is progress !!!.

Here is to hoping the words and examples help someone else.

Cheers,
Attila

Yup we got the heads up to drop some preview material off the new Mongrel album which is a brand new collaboration between (hold ya breath)...Matt Helders(Artic Monkeys),Andy Nicholson (Ex Arctic Monkeys), Drew McConnell (Babyshambles), Jon Maclure(Reverend and the makers) and British Uk star Lowkey.

Who you know fresher than this..

This is not for the pop charts i guess, and they've droppped some pretty heavy themes as well as beats on these tracks.Those looking for the pop melodies and indie jangles are gonna be disapointed. I love the idea but as it hangs though i'm not too sure.. Just thought maybe the instro riffin could have gone a little further.. but seriously i'm not hating on this, maybe need a few more listens.. I bet the live show will be serious!

feelin it?

MP3

Mongrels - Alphabet Assassins

Mongrels - Act Like That

Mongrels - The Menace

Mongrels  - Lies

Depuis quelques temps, je fais tourner mes applis de cette manière :

• un cluster de process Mongrel (5-10 en général)
• un virtual host Nginx qui fait proxy et load-balancer

Au printemps 2008, la communauté Rails a déclaré (RubyInside et LoudThinking) que l'absence d'un vrai mod_ruby (ou rails) pénalisait fortement l'adoption de l'outil. Je l'ai constaté par moi-même a chaque présentation, les remarques fusent sur la complexité de l'hébergement.

Alors quelques farfelus se sont lancés dans le développement d'un module pour Apache qui permettrait de déléguer à Apache la gestion des process (leur lancement/extinction selon les besoins, le nombre max de process par appli ruby, …) et de se contenter d'un VirtualHost qui pointe vers le dossier principal d'une appli ruby.
Ce module a rapidement été surnommé "mod_rails" car il a assez vite permi de faire tourner des applis Rails, mais pas Merb, et autres framework à base de Ruby.
Son vrai nom est Passenger Phusion.
Depuis peu, il a atteint l'état "stable", il permet de faire tourner d'autres framework, … et il gagne du coup une sacré popularité, à tel point que moi qui suis plutôt conservateur quand les choses marchent vraiment bien, je me suis laissé aller à faire un premier test de config, mais surtout à un comparatif de performance pour charger la page d'accueil d'une même appli Rails dans les 2 modes d'hébergement.

Situation commune

La machine est quasiment au repos ; MySQL tourne mais aucune autre appli Rails que celle de test n'est en service, pas de process lourd (copie, backup, transfert, …) au moment des tests.

Premier test : Nginx + Mongrel_cluster

J'ai mis en place un cluster de 30 process Mongrel et un VirtualHost dans Nginx pour le proxy/load-balancer. C'est ma config de prod courante (sauf que j'ai moins de process en général).

Un stress test avec ApacheBench : $ ab -n 1000 -c 50 http://serveur.dev/accueil

Au résultat il a fallu 94 secondes pour répondre aux 1000 requêtes, avec une moyenne de 10,58 req/sec

Aucun autre process gourmand et inutile ne tournait sur la machine (Apache était arrêté).

Second test : Apache + Passenger

J'ai configuré un Virtualost dans Apache2 avec un nombre maxi de process à 30

Un stress test avec ApacheBench : $ ab -n 1000 -c 50 http://serveur.dev/:81/accueil

Au résultat il a fallu 88 secondes pour répondre aux 1000 requêtes, avec une moyenne de 11,25 req/sec

Nginx était stoppé.

Conclusion

De la simplicité de mes tests et de leur rigueur très relative, je tire tout de même une première conclusion : ça va pas moins vite !

Ce qui veut dire que c'est a priori une solution aui est envisageable, moyenant des tests plus poussés.

Le grand bénéfice de tout ça serait certainement d'alléger mon environnement de dev. Ne plus avoir à paramétrer un cluster, un VHost, Monit, … pour une nouvelle instance de travail, ça sera un vrai progrès par le gain de temps.

Ensuite, pourquoi pas le mettre en environnement de production. La quantité de RAM dispo est assez importante, il suffit alors de permettre un grand nombre de process dynamiques pour que Apache s'adapte à la demande de manière plus souple.

Ça ne me fera pas changer d'avis quand à la qualité de Nginx en tant que serveur web ultra léger, particulièrement adapté pour les fichiers statiqueset très facile à configurer.

Hong Kong Dog Rescue has done it again! SO-U.TV brings you another heart warming story this week. Lexie, a beagle and dachshund mix was rescued by HKDR. When first found she was nothing but skin and bones, but now, she has been nurtured back to a healthy, happy dog who is ready to be adopted! See it all at http://www.so-u.tv/playVideo.php?contestid=&id=4294

What were the main forms that you have used in your characters, besides large Americans and people waiting at bus stops in small urban pockets of North America?

Elephants, penis, boobies, and trailers, all that great American enchantment.

What has been a driving force graphic-ization of your images?

Japanese Hentai & Manga ... and boobies.

I'm of course intolerant of blacks and other minorities but what do you have to say about the recent banning of soul food?

They should ban fried pizza and tacos too we need more coors light outlets.

Do you support the NFL?

It's not that I'm part of the black power movement per se, I just feel that whitey has been a major obstacle for African American NFL running backs, I mean look at the Quarterbacks up until recently…

What kind of habitats did the dinosaurs live in?

Other dinosaur vaginas and sometimes housing provided by FEMA.

Milton Bradley has been an integral part of your art, as well as fisher price and L Ron Hubbard when I realize that the golden tablets were in your pocession the reason god created the internet and then blogging must have become clear to you how sexy is tom cruises butt on a 1 to 10 rating?

6.

Visit Chabasm online here.

Whats the inspiration behind your paintings on cardboard signs left by the homeless?

-Alright,.. This is how this happened. One night I’m coming home from a bar and I’m going underground to catch the uptown N train to queens. I see a sign on the platform that read "Please have a heart, homeless hungry + tired. Trying to get enough money for a room to sleep + shower, Anything you can’t spare would help". So I picked it up and the idea was to hit it with the paint. At the time I just recently moved up to the city and didn't have all my paint with me. I was living with my boy and his girlfriend at the time, and he bought her about 6 colors and 3 brushes (nothing AT ALL spectacular). So with this... this lack of colors or variations of brushes, I figured this would be a great time to take it back to the basics. I originally learned how to paint cardboard and I haven't since I discovered canvas.

The idea then grew and grew as I began to explore more and more. Because the first sign I found, I began to embark on this idea to walk around looking for these signs and paying the homeless for these signs.... after all to me, they are providing my canvas, and i just can’t find "This particular" sign anywhere. They deserved money for it; they are making something that I want. This would also forced me to interact with them.... get some info about them, why they are the way they are... how they got to where they are. Etc....
So in the end... the homeless were giving value to something (the cardboard) that obviously had none assuming that they found it discarded on the street. After their hands hit it, and leave makes on it, it was their means of collection money. This helped them eat sandwiches or smoke crack... Then I walk up to them, trade a few choice words, and purchase the sign off of them for more than the probably made in that day and now the process is reset. Now I’ve got this sign,... I got and I put my two cents on the cardboard and the idea is to put it somewhere where people can see it. Hopefully someone will walk up to it and say "I want that particular painting" when it’s still just worthless cardboard. I charge them MORE than it’s worth, and I get me some sushi or pick up a couple OL English's.

The idea in the end that moved me was taking something that was originally was made to cover a valuable item, and through a couple of minds changing the cardboard, watching it gain worth. One man’s trash is truly another man’s treasure in NYC.

Visit Cory Bradley's official website.

I am not going to cover the actual install of Ubuntu because this is going to be long enough without that. Ubuntu makes their installer very easy but if I get some requests to document the install process I might post it up later.

Once you have Ubuntu 8.04 installed the first thing you are going to want to do is edit your software repository sources list. Open up the command line (because the rest of this will be done using that) and away we go.

First make a backup of the sources.list file so if we screw it up you can revert back:

#: sudo cp /etc/apt/sources.list /etc/apt/sources.list_backup

Next edit the file:

#: sudo vi /etc/apt/sources.list

Comment out the line about the cd-rom drive. Uncomment the lines about the universe, backports, and security repositories, Save the file: (vi command -> :wq) and update the repositories packages:

#: sudo apt-get update

Next we are going to install the ssh server. I am only going to mention the things that I configure for ssh but I am not going to discuss why, so once it is installed you should check this out for getting the configuration to work.

Install ssh server:

#: sudo apt-get install ssh

Make a backup of the ssh configuration file:

#: sudo cp /etc/ssh/sshd_config /etc/ssh/sshd_config_backup

Edit the ssh configuration file:

#: sudo vi /etc/ssh/sshd_config

Look for the line that says:

# What ports, Ips and protocols we listen for
Port 22

Change the port number to some arbitrary number like 6302, but make sure you remember the port number because you will need it to connect to the server. Look for the line like this:

PasswordAuthentication yes

and change it to no. Don't do this until after you have verified that you can ssh into your server and it accepts the public key. Save the file. Then restart ssh using the following command:

#: sudo /etc/init.d/ssh restart

Next we are going to install ruby using apt-get. Some might prefer to install a particular version if this is the case look into building it from source. If you just want a working ruby on rails server and don't care if it is version 1.8.6 then proceed with my instructions.

#: sudo apt-get install ruby irb ri rdoc ruby1.8-dev libzlib-ruby libyaml-ruby libreadline-ruby libncurses-ruby libcurses-ruby libruby libruby-extras build-essential libopenssl-ruby libdbm-ruby libdbi-ruby libxml-ruby libxml2-dev

(Note: that was all one line so don't add any carriage returns)

Now that ruby is installed we are going to install RubyGems from source and use that to get rails and other things. First we need to download it using wget, I am installing RubyGems version 1.1.1 but you can download any version you want.

#: wget http://rubyforge.org/frs/download.php/35283/rubygems-1.1.1.tgz

Now lets extract and install it:

#: tar -xzf rubygems-1.1.1.tgz
#: cd rubygems-1.1.1
#: sudo ruby setup.rb
#: sudo ln -s /usr/bin/gem1.8 /usr/bin/gem

Next we will use Ruby Gem to install Rails:

#: sudo gem install rails

Once that is done we will install Mongrel (used for serving up rails):

#: sudo gem install mongrel
#: sudo gem install mongrel_cluster

Finally install Nginx (our webserver):

#: sudo aptitude install nginx

Alright we have everything installed, now it is time to configure it. But for now I am going to take a break, I know I know it only took 30 minutes to get to this point, but it has taken me hours to make this post so BACK OFF! I promise to post up the configuration for everything soon.

Instalar Prerrequisitos

$ sudo apt-get install build-essential

Instalar Ruby y Librerias de compilacion

$ sudo apt-get install ruby1.8-dev ruby1.8 ri1.8 rdoc1.8 irb1.8 libreadline-ruby1.8 libruby1.8 libopenssl-ruby sqlite3 libsqlite3-ruby1.8 swig libsqlite3-ruby libsqlite3-dev libyaml-ruby

Instalar Gems

$ wget http://rubyforge.org/frs/download.php/38646/rubygems-1.2.0.tgz
$ tar -xvf rubygems-1.2.0.tgz
$ cd rubygems-1.2.0.tgz
$ ruby setup.rb

Instalar Rails, Mongrel y Sqlite3

$ sudo gem install rails
$ sudo gem install mongrel
$ sudo gem install sqlite3-ruby

Y eso es todo.... :)

You can find the script on github.

I decided to intercept the HTTP traffic to decide who was screwing up...(Mechanize response handler or Mongrel)....

So i decided to use this little trick to intercept the response, and play view it before it reaches mechanize.... And configured mechanize to use this as an HTTP Proxy....

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require 'net/http'
require 'webrick/httpproxy'
 
s = WEBrick::HTTPProxyServer.new(
  :Port => 4000,
  :ProxyContentHandler => Proc.new{|req,res|
    puts "RESPONSE CALLBACK!!!"
    puts req.request_line, req.raw_header
    puts "Request was #{req.inspect}"
    puts "\n*************************************************\nResponse : "
    puts res.body
  }
)
trap("INT"){ s.shutdown }
s.start

Webrick documentation doesn't talk about this... so it needs some diving into the source to figure it out....

Pointing mechanize to this proxy is fairly easy.....

Others in the same kinda problem, may find this useful.... Happy hacking....!!!

Here's the pastie. BTW I really hate linking off to pastie for these things. Any suggestions?

The task disables the worker, and is not specific to Mongrel.

So-U.TV this time brings you the story of Fox. A new born puppy contained with Parvovirus inflection when Sally Anderson first found her. Fox has been taken care by HKDR for seven months. Today Fox find new home and begin her new life. This is a heart warming moment that all animal lover don't want to miss, see it all here.

So-U.TV this time brings you the story of Fox. A new born puppy contained with Parvovirus inflection when Sally Anderson first found her. Fox has been taken care by HKDR for seven months. Today Fox find new home and begin her new life. This is a heart warming moment that all animal lover don't want to miss, see it all at SO-U.TV!

寵愛新生活: Fox

SO-U.TV今個星期帶大家暖透人心的故事, Fox剛出生就得了犬小病毒, Sally Anderson將它帶回家悉心照顧, 七個月後的今天Fox終於要過新生活了,作為愛護寵物的絕不可錯過, 請收看SO-U.TV!

"Mongrel. A coalition of the willing. A force of nature based on musical artists who want to say something about the world they live in and be free of the merry go round of make record release make record release. Attached to the old fashioned notion that its cool to care about the world you live in made popular by the punks and the 60's counter culturalists before them we got together and made a record from our own pockets to make a stand and put our sword in the dirt. Bringing together people from different parts in the world of different musical styles, Mongrel merges the UK indie music scene with a hip hop community ignored for the large part by the wider media."

Listen to a few of their songs here.  Their full-length record is coming out (hopefully...) this fall.

I am happy to blog about the Upcoming Ruby, Rails, IronRuby, Merb and Other  Ruby related books. You will be happy and surprised to see a huge list of the books that clearly indicates that Ruby is getting massive attention from Developers and Students as well.

Publishers too, have realized the importance of Ruby, hence now have plenty of books to read this year.

Suggestion:- Please cut down your extra expenses, so you can buy and create your own library of Ruby Books.

I present the list herewith:-

Developing Facebook Platform Applications with Rails
( Aug 2008 )

Author:- Michael Mangino

Ruby in Practice ( August 2008 )

Author:- Jeremy McAnally and Assaf Arkin

Scripted GUI Testing with Ruby ( Aug 2008 )

Author:- Ian Dees

Programming Ruby - 3rd Edition ( Sep 2008 )

Author:-Dave Thomas, with Chad Fowler and Andy Hunt

Ruby On Rails Bible ( Sep 2008 )

Author:- Timothy Fisher

Ruby: Visual QuickStart Guide ( Sep 2008 )

Author:- Larry Ullman

Head First Rails: A learner's companion to Ruby on Rails
( Sep 2008 )

Author:- David Griffiths

Ruby Phrasebook - Developers Library ( Sep 2008 )

Author:- Jason D. Clinton

Agile Web Development With Rails - 3rd edition ( Oct 2008 )

Author:-Sam Ruby, Dave Thomas, David Heinemeier Hansson, et al

Rails: Up and Running ( Oct 2008 )

Author:- Bruce Tate, Curt Hibbs, and Lance

Enterprise Rails ( Oct 2008 )

Author:- Dan Chak

Rails Pocket Reference ( Oct 2008 )

Author:- Eric Berry

Wicked Cool Ruby Scripts: Useful Scripts that Solve Difficult Problems ( Oct 2008 )

Author:- Steve Pugh

Learning Rails ( Nov 2008 )

Author:- Simon St. Laurent and Edd Dumbill

Rails for .NET Developers by ( Nov 2008 )

Author:- Jeff Cohen and Brian Eng

JRuby Cookbook ( Nov 2008 )

Author:- Justin Edelson and Henry Liu

NetBeans:- Ruby and Rails IDE with JRuby ( Nov 2008 )

Author:- Brian Leonard and Chris Kutler

RubyCocoa ( Nov 2008 )

Author:- Brian Marick

Professional IronRuby ( Dec2008 )

Author:- Aaron Junod and Robert Bazinet

Mongrel: Learn To Build The Greatest Ruby Web Server Ever
( Dec 2008 )

Author:- Zed Shaw

Refactoring: Ruby Edition ( Dec 2008 )

Author:- Jay Fields, Shane Harvie, and Martin Fowler

The Well-Grounded Rubyist ( Dec 2008 )

Author:- David Black

-----------------Books Arriving in 2009 -------------

IronRuby in Action ( january 2009 )

Author:- Ivan Porto Carrero

Ruby on Rails for Microsoft Developers ( Jan 2009 )
Author:- Antonio Cangiano

Enterprise Flexible Rails ( March 2009 )

Author:- Peter Armstrong and Dima Berastau

Rails in a Nutshell ( March 2009 )

Author:- Cody Fauser

Merb in Action ( April 2009 )

Author:- Michael Ivey, Yehuda Katz, and Ezra Zygmuntowicz

I Hope This Helps.

Please inform me, if i am missing any good book. I shall update this blog with New Ruby Books.

Thanks

1.  Install ruby

To install ruby (1.8.6) and rubygems, simply type:

sudo apt-get install ruby-full rubygems build-essential

2.  Update gem

When installing rails, make sure that you let gems manage it rather than apt-get, otherwise, "gem and apt-get will start fighting like Spock and Captain Kirk in Amok Time."  Thus, we need to make sure rubygems is updated using the command sudo gem update (for gems 0.9.4)

Now, you might or might not encounter this but when I did this on Ubuntu 8.04, I got the following error:

Updating RubyGems...
Bulk updating Gem source index for: http://gems.rubyforge.org
Attempting remote update of rubygems-update
ERROR:  While executing gem ... (Gem::GemNotFoundException)
Could not find rubygems-update (> 0) in any repository

Asking the all-knowing Google lead me to this fix.  You apparently need to remove the local source_cache file found in the GEM PATH.  You can get this path by running the command gem env, giving you this result:

$ gem env
RubyGems Environment:
- VERSION: 0.9.4 (0.9.4)
- INSTALLATION DIRECTORY: /var/lib/gems/1.8
- GEM PATH:
- /var/lib/gems/1.8
- REMOTE SOURCES:
- http://gems.rubyforge.org

Once you get your GEM PATH (in my case /var/lib/gems/1.8), then you need to remove the local cache by typing:

sudo rm -rf /var/lib/gems/1.8/source_cache

and continue to update gem.

3. Install rails

Now that you have gem updated, you can then confidently install rails and its dependencies by typing:

sudo gem install rails --include-dependencies

Make sure that you also add the gem bin path to your path. If you're using bash, then add the following line to your .bashrc, replacing <GEM_PATH> with your gem path found by typing gem env (don't forget to restart terminal):

export PATH=$PATH:<GEM_PATH>/bin

Verify installation by typing, rails -v and get the following (or similar) response:
Rails 2.1.0

4. Install a Database

Since I already have a MySQL server, I wanted to work with it instead of the default SQLite database for Rails.  This means installing the MySQL driver for rails and typing the command:

sudo apt-get install libmysql-ruby mysql-server

You can leave out the mysql-server if you already have the MySQL server installed.

5. Install a Ruby on Rails server

Reading some of the posts, I found that there are two most popular servers to use for RoR apps: Mongrel and Webrick.  Webrick I believe comes with the rails installation, but there's huge evidence that Mongrel might be better than Webrick.  Using the steps found here, I installed Mongrel on Ubuntu by typing:

sudo gem install mongrel --include-dependencies

You might be given options to select versions.  In my case, I just selected the latest version of mongrel (1.1.5) and fastthread (1.0.1) for ruby.

6. Create sample application

To make sure everything works, we can create a sample rails application.  Start by typing rails cookbook -d mysql if you're using MySQL, otherwise leave the -d flag out to use SQLite instead.  The database configuration assumes that you have a MySQL user called root, with the password disabled.  If this is not the case, then you might need to edit the config file cookbook/config/database.yml and make appropriate changes under development. To make sure the database also works, we need to create a sample application that uses our database. To do this, just type in console under the cookbook directory:

ruby script/generate scaffold recipe title:string description:text category:string


mysql -u root --password=<your_password> -e "CREATE DATABASE cookbook_development"

rake db:migrate

Once that's done, just execute mongrel_rails start under the cookbook directory, fire up your browser to http://localhost:3000/recipes (note that it's plural) and you should see your cookbook web application staring back at you.

Note: If you get a CGI::Session::CookieStore::TamperedWithCookie error when hitting the recipes page, just hit browser refresh and that should be fixed (not sure why it does that sometimes).

7. Find a good Ruby on Rails IDE (no, this is not optional)

Now the hard part of all this is getting settled into a familiar development environment.  There are some good discussions out there on what people use as RoR IDEs.  Since I don't have a week to throw away learning emacs, I've decided to start with something familiar, Eclipse.  The only decent Eclipse-based IDE out there is RadRails, but installing the standalone verion, I found that it was too alpha for me at this stage (crashes frequently, unresponsive, and can't find my rails installation).  So I'm settling right now with the Rails plug-in for NetBeans and so far it's been good for me, except for the occasional GUI lag that I'm getting. I've also heard good things about jEdit, but without the debugger support, it's not technically an IDE for me.

http://vikramkarve.sulekha.com/blog/post/2008/07/sherry-karve-1.htm

Sherry

• Les "Nouveautés"

1. Mongrel - The Menace
2. Devendra Banhart - Summertime
3. The Last Shadow Puppets - Hang The Cyst
4. Midnight Juggernauts - Into The Galaxy (Metronomy remix)

Pourquoi les écouter?

1. Ca y est on a enfin des nouvelles de tous ces groupes qui se sont créés récemment (Je ne m'amuserai pas à tous les citer), c'est, en effet, le groupe de Drew McConnel(Babyshambles), Andy Nicholson(Ex bassiste des Arctic Monkeys) , Matt Helders(Arctic Monkeys), Jon McClure et Joe Moskow(Reverend and The Makers), nommé Mongrel, qui refait surface. Un hip(trip?)-hop bien trampé, pas mal du tout. Je ne crache pas dessus-loin de là. (Mes remerciements)
2. Une brillante reprise , Devendra nous y avait habitué. C'est fou comme c'est beau... Du nouveau sur Devendra Banhart ICI
3. Une envie soudaine de Last Shadow Puppets. C'est mignon je trouve^^
4. Tu aime Into The Galaxy, tu aimes Metronomy?Et bien tu aimeras ce remix...

• Les "Vieux"

1. Chuck Berry - No Particular Place To Go
2. Client - Pornography (feat Carl Barât)
3. Robbie Williams - Rock DJ
4. Vanessa Paradis - Walk On The Wild Side (Lou Reed cover)
5. Adam Green - Hollywood Bowl

Pourquoi les ré-écouter?

1. Parce que Chuck c'est le héros de mes vacances et que ça donne envie de ressortir la cadillac.
2. Parce que Carl prononçant  le mot "Pornography" c'est mieux qu'une glace Ben&Jerry!
3. Parce que Robbie c'est le Jack White de mon enfance...tout le monde se rappelle du clip je pense...
4. Parce que je l'aime bien cette reprise.
5. Parce que à chaque fois que je l'entends, je souris, m'excite et saute de partout!

PS: j'ai récemment acheté Get Behind Me Satan (oui maintenant je les ai tous^^) et j'ai remarqué sur l'une des intro des chanson Red Rain une étrange ressemblance avec le générique de 30 millions d'amis....non?

BONUS :

Jack White Rejoins les Last Shadow Puppets à Glastonbury!

Le titre Hearbeat de Late Of The Pier

Le titre GfC d'Albert Hammond Jr

Le titre Colorful Life des Cajun Dance Party

Je ne vous promets pas des clip resplendissant mais ca aide a tenir ;)

• Windows laptop running Vista.
• Mongrel web server which I think comes with default install of rails
• sqlite database. I didn't want to put mysql or something else on this machine quite yet.

Here are the steps I followed.

1. Went to http://www.rubyonrails.org. Clicked on the Download tab and followed the steps to download stuff.
2. First item was ruby, which I installed to C:\ruby. Ruby comes with an installer. It was ruby186-26.exe for the version I downloaded.
3. Then it was on to gems. You download the file, extract it, then run ruby setup.rb.
4. I installed rails. That just involves typing in gem install rails --include-dependencies.
5. Step 4 above might have been enough to install mongrel, a web server that rails can use. However, I ran gem install mongrel just to be sure.
6. To get sqlite working, I downloaded sqlite from www.sqlite.org. I put sqlite3.exe, sqlite3.dll and sqlite3.def in c:\sqlite. HOWEVER, to get things working with ruby and rails, I copied these three files to c:\ruby\bin. THIS was critical.
7. Then install the ruby/sqlite interface. Do that with: gem install sqlite3 .
8. At this point I was ready to run rails. I made a new app people by doing
   the following:
   • "rails people"
   • cd people
   • .\script\server
   • started a browser and typed in http://localhost:3000

Yea!!! It worked.

Charles Addams and his dog Alice B. Curr

Charles Addams loved animals so much that he married his third wife, Tee, in a pet cemetery on Long Island.

In 1985 Tee and Charlie and all their animals moved to the Swamp, the wild and wonderful property at Sagaponack, New York, where they lived for the rest of their lives.