Nepal on Rails

Setup GitLab (Github clone) using Vagrant and Chef

Update: Nov 28, 2011: The box that is downloaded via vagrant might not work properly. Here is the box that I’d custom built to have chef pre-installed. You can download it here http://api2.ge.tt/0/8gA4QSA/0/blob/download

This post is Part 1 of the series Rails app with distributed deployment playground

Here we’ll be installing GitlabHQ.

I won’t be showing on how to install Vagrant with VirtualBox here. If you’re not familiar with Vagrant and how to set it up, then first watch the Railscasts 292 and install the Vagrant with VirtualBox.

Then you can start with the following commands in the terminal. First of all, we have to have our own chef-repo to contain the cookbooks.

You can clone my repo or you can use your own or others. Here I’ll be using mine chef-repo

cd
git clone git://github.com/millisami/chef-repo.git

Now, lets start with the gitlabhq setup.

cd
mkdir vagrants
cd vagrants
git clone git://github.com/gitlabhq/gitlabhq.git
cd gitlabhq
vagrant init

Modify the Vagrantfile as below

Vagrant::Config.run do |config|
  config.vm.box = "lucid32"
  config.vm.network "33.33.33.20"

  config.vm.customize do |vm|
    vm.name = "GitlabHQ"
    vm.memory_size = 384
  end

  config.vm.provision :chef_solo do |chef|
    chef.log_level = :debug
    chef.cookbooks_path = ["~/chef-repo/cookbooks"]
    chef.add_recipe "base"
    chef.add_recipe "rvm::install"
    chef.add_recipe "rvm::ruby_192"

    chef.json = { 
      :base => {
        :system_packages => ["tree", "htop", "vim-nox"]
        }
      }
    }
  end
end

Then from the terminal, run the following commands.

vagrant up
vagrant ssh

Once you login, install these dependencies.

sudo apt-get install -y git-core sqlite3 libsqlite3-dev gitosis libcurl4-openssl-dev python-setuptools

sudo visudo

Add the following line at the VERY BOTTOM of the file, if not at the end, it can be nullified by later entries

vagrant ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: ALL

Ctrl-X to leave, Y to save your changes. Logout logout and ssh vagrant ssh again to reflect the effect.

Lets install the gem dependencies.

cd /vagrant
rvmsudo gem install bundler --pre
bundle

# Seeding the database
RAILS_ENV=production bundle exec rake db:setup
RAILS_ENV=production bundle exec rake db:seed_fu

Write the admin account and its password which we’ve to use later while accessing gitlab.

...
Administrator account created:

login.........admin@local.host
password......5iveL!fe

Then, we have to setup the following:

sudo easy_install pygments
sudo echo 'export RAILS_ENV=production' >> ~/.bash_profile
sudo adduser --system --shell /bin/sh --gecos 'git version control' --group --disabled-password --home /home/git git
ssh-keygen -t rsa
sudo -H -u git gitosis-init < ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub
sudo chmod 755 /home/git/repositories/gitosis-admin.git/hooks/post-update

echo "gem: --no-rdoc --no-ri" > ~/.gemrc
rvmsudo gem install passenger
rvmsudo passenger-install-nginx-module

Creating an Upstart file for nginx

sudo vim /etc/init/nginx.conf

description "Nginx HTTP Server"

start on filesystem
stop on runlevel [!2345]

respawn

exec /opt/nginx/sbin/nginx -g "daemon off;"

Restart the VM

sudo shutdown -r now

Verify nginx urnning

sudo initctl list | grep nginx

You should see:

nginx start/running, process 678

…Or use a browser and visit http://33.33.33.20

Open nginx.conf to configure nginx

sudo vim /opt/nginx/conf/nginx.conf

Change the user to ‘vagrant’

Then inside the http {....}, add/replace a server block looking similar to this:

...
http {
  ...

    server {
    listen 80;
    server_name localhost;
    root /vagrant/public;
    passenger_enabled on;
    }
    ...
}

Restart nginx to pick up the changes

sudo service nginx stop; sudo service nginx start

or just

sudo start|stop nginx

Setting up the first repository

1. Access http://33.33.33.20 on the HOST machine’s browser
2. Login in using admin@local.host and 5iveL!fe
3. Add your HOST key at http://33.33.33.20/keys
4. Create the first project, say (Myproject)
5. Add a remote. git remote add vagrant-chef git@33.33.33.20:Myproject.git
6. Push with tracking branch. git push -u vagrant-chef master

Dealing with the Git and SSH keys gotchas

1. Added user vagrant to group git since /home/git/repositories directory is owned by git

2. Did one clone in ~/tmp directory git clone git@localhost:gitosis-admin.git gitosis-copy to add the RSA key to the list of known hosts. So, that when later via browser, the webserver will try to create a new repo. Otherwise you might end up with the infamous 500 error page.

Thats it for this part. Hang-on for the part 2 of the series Rails app with distributed deployment playground

Rails app with distributed deployment playground

While setting up Etxpress on the production box with system wide installed RVM and Resque for background processing, monitored via Upstart using Foreman export command, I had to run the following command to export the updated Procfile.production file with capistrano and custom cap deploy:foreman task.

rvmsudo foreman export upstart /etc/init -a etxpress -u deploy \ 
        -f ./Procfile.production -c worker=1 scheduler=1 redis=1 

Since the command rvmsudo is for sudoers, it asks for sudo password which capistrano cannot handle. Similarly, there are some other commands that need the sudo access as well. So, tweaking the settings directly in production and playing with cap deploy:foreman and other sudo related tasks, I’d to manually login and do service restarts.

This is not a best practice to test or play with deployment settings directly on the production box. So, to simulate the same environment and process, here the Vagrant and Chef come in.

The idea is to host a Gitlab as a Github repo in one VM, launch another VM to simulate the production box and setup the multistage capistrano recipe to test and experiment.

It will be a long post. So, I’ll be blogging in the following series:

1. Setup Gitlab as a Github repo hosting
2. Setup a production box in another VM
3. Setup capistrano multistage to test the deployment

To automate the process, we’ll be using vagrant to launch VM(s) and chef-solo for provisioning. I might do another post using chef-server to make it more automated.

Without further ado, here is the first part of the series: Setup Gitlab as a Github repo hosting using vagrant and chef-solo.

Installing ruby-debug in ruby 1.9.3 with rvm

blog.wyeworks.com posted a way to install ruby-debug in 1.9.3 in rbenv addressing the details of the problem.

I’m just posting a quick installation in rvm. Install ruby 1.9.3 if you haven’t or skip to the next block.

rvm get head
rvm install ruby-1.9.3-p0
rvm reload
rvm 1.9.3

Now lets install the ruby-debug gem. Follow the below simple steps:

cd ~/tmp
wget http://rubyforge.org/frs/download.php/75414/linecache19-0.5.13.gem
wget http://rubyforge.org/frs/download.php/75415/ruby-debug-base19-0.11.26.gem

$ gem install linecache19-0.5.13.gem 
Building native extensions.  This could take a while...
Successfully installed linecache19-0.5.13
1 gem installed
$ gem install ruby-debug-base19-0.11.26.gem -- --with-ruby-include=$rvm_path/src/ruby-1.9.3-p0
Building native extensions.  This could take a while...
Successfully installed ruby-debug-base19-0.11.26
1 gem installed
$ irb
irb(main):001:0> require 'ruby-debug'
=> true

Installing ruby-debug19 with rvm or just normal ruby installed

While installing ruby-debug19 whether with rvm or normal ruby installation, I often trip into the following error while through bundle install or just gem install ruby-debug19

Installing linecache19 (0.5.12) with native extensions 
Unfortunately, a fatal error has occurred. Please report this 
error to the Bundler issue tracker at 
https://github.com/carlhuda/bundler/issues so that we can fix 
it. Thanks! 

/Users/millisami/.rvm/rubies/ruby-1.9.2-head/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.9 .1/rubygems/installer.rb:552:in `rescue in block in build_extensions’: ERROR: Failed to build gem native extension. (Gem::Installer::ExtensionBuildError)

        /Users/millisami/.rvm/rubies/ruby-1.9.2-head/bin/ruby extconf.rb 
checking for vm_core.h... no
checking for vm_core.h... no
.......
.......
.......

So, this is just a note to myself not to google again and again if I trip into this error again. So, the solution is just gem install ruby-debug19 -- --with-ruby-include=$rvm_path/src/ruby-1.9.2-head/

gem install ruby-debug19 -- --with-ruby-include=$rvm_path/src/ruby-1.9.2-head/
Building native extensions.  This could take a while...
Fetching: ruby-debug-base19-0.11.25.gem (100%)
Building native extensions.  This could take a while...
Fetching: ruby-debug19-0.11.6.gem (100%)
Successfully installed linecache19-0.5.12
Successfully installed ruby-debug-base19-0.11.25
Successfully installed ruby-debug19-0.11.6
3 gems installed

If you’re using rvm, don’t forget to replace the <ruby-1.9.2-head> with your choice of ruby.

This also works for non-rvm installs, just chage the —with-ruby-include= value to point to an extracted copy of the source.

Rails3.1 with compass, sass and twitter-bootstrap using the asset pipeline

I prefer the sass original syntax over the new scss. And I don’t want to loose the awesome CSS3 mixins. When you google, you’ll find many articles and almost all have different hacks to implement. But as of today, those load paths hacks are not necessary when I tried to use the compass and twitter-bootstrap.

Add the necessary gems in the Gemfile.

group :assets do
  ...
  gem 'compass', git: 'https://github.com/chriseppstein/compass.git'
  gem 'sass-rails', "  ~> 3.1.0"
  gem 'anjlab-bootstrap-rails', :require => 'bootstrap-rails',
                                :git => 'git://github.com/anjlab/bootstrap-rails.git'
end

Rename the app/assets/stylesheets/application.css file to app/assets/stylesheets/application.sass and change the commented manifest from:

/*
 * This is a manifest file that'll automatically include all the stylesheets available in this directory
 * and any sub-directories. You're free to add application-wide styles to this file and they'll appear at
 * the top of the compiled file, but it's generally better to create a new file per style scope.
 *= require_self
 *= require_tree . 
*/

to sass comment style

// * This is a manifest file that'll automatically include all the stylesheets available in this directory
// * and any sub-directories. You're free to add application-wide styles to this file and they'll appear at
// * the top of the compiled file, but it's generally better to create a new file per style scope.
// *= require_self
// *= require_tree .
// *= require bootstrap

Now do import of compass css3 mixins the sass way in the same application.sass file or other files.

@import "compass/css3/opacity"

#logo h1
  +opacity(0.5)

Thats it.