Posts by Ben Arblaster

Ubuntu 12.04 LTS “Precise” now available 29 Apr 13

Available from today, you can now choose Ubuntu 12.04 LTS “Precise” as the base OS when building new Brightboxes, both 32-bit and 64-bit variants are available.

Ubuntu Precise is the current Long Term Support (LTS) version of Ubuntu with bug and security fixes provided until April 2017. Highlights include the Linux 3.2 kernel, Apache 2.2.22, Nginx 1.1.19, Upstart 1.5, OpenJDK 7, upgrades for Puppet and Chef and many more bug and security fixes.

We’ve included the usual Brightbox Ruby deployment stack and our “next generation” Ruby 1.8.7 and 1.9.3 packages, as well as the latest Phusion passenger. A significant change from Lucid-based Brightboxes is that Ruby 1.9.3 is now the default, as Ruby 1.8.7 is end-of-life from June 2013. If you still require 1.8.7, the included ruby-switch tool makes it simple to switch between Ruby versions as required. For more information please see the documentation.

When buying a new Brightbox, you’ll see a combo box that you can use to select Precise (Lucid is still currently the default). In-place upgrades from Hardy or Lucid to Precise aren’t possible due to significant changes to the GRUB bootloader, so you’ll either need to request a re-image (which involves wiping your box, so make backups!) or buy a new box and move your apps to it.

We’ve now discontinued Ubuntu 8.04 LTS “Hardy” based Brightboxes, as it reaches the end of support in May 2013. Existing Hardy users should consider an upgrade to Lucid or Precise as soon as possible, as important bug and security fixes will no longer be provided.

Ubuntu 12.04 LTS “Precise” beta testing 16 Apr 13

We’re currently in the final stages of testing Ubuntu “Precise” (12.04 LTS) Brightboxes, we’re now looking for volunteers for beta testing. If you’re an existing customer and would like a Precise box to test, please open a support ticket or email support@brightbox.co.uk. Both 32-bit and 64-bit variants are available.

Beta test Brightboxes are free, but Precise is still in testing so there may still be bugs, so you shouldn’t plan on running your live customer-facing sites on one just yet. Once we launch Precise-based boxes for all, we’ll be switching off the beta boxes.

We’ve included the usual Brightbox Ruby deployment stack and our “next generation” Ruby 1.8.7 and 1.9.3 packages, as well as the latest Phusion passenger. One of the significant changes is that Ruby 1.9.3 is now the default, though you can use the included ruby-switch tool to easily revert to 1.8.7 if required.

Space on the test platform is limited, so if you’d like a box, don’t delay!

64-bit Brightboxes now available 29 Sep 10

From today, you can build 64-bit Lucid & Hardy Brightboxes! 64-bit boxes include the usual Brightbox Ruby/Rails stack and deployment tune-up, including our Ruby EE packages, atop a 64-bit userland and kernel.

Why use 64-bit?

There are a number of advantages to 64-bit architectures.

• Increased performance with >3GB of RAM – Addressing more than 3GB of RAM in userland on 32-bit linux requires the use a PAE which incurs a small performance overhead, this is not necessary with 64-bit. This can benefit applications that access large amounts of memory such as MySQL.
• Larger memory-mapped files – Particularly useful for a number of key-value/nosql databases such as Redis and others that use memory-mapped files for storage. MongoDB, for example, is limited to ~2.5GB of storage on 32-bit architectures.
• Certain number-crunching applications such as encryption and audio/video encoding can benefit greatly from access to 64-bit registers, offering considerable performance increases.

However, 64-bit isn’t always beneficial! In nearly all cases a 64-bit process will require (sometimes considerably) more memory than an identical 32-bit process due to larger pointers and other data-types occupying more space. This is particularly prevalent with Ruby where many of the internal data structures double in size when switching to 64-bit. Before deciding on 64-bit you should weigh up the pros and cons for your particular application.

Rails 3 has landed! 9 Sep 10

After two years of hard work, the third generation of Rails is ready for the big time! Rails 3 brings about some major changes to make things all together “better, faster, cleaner, and more beautiful” and solve some of the common issues seen with Rails 2. Some of the major highlights include

Improved router syntax for Action Controller

The router syntax in Rails 3 has been completely revamped to build on the work from Rails 2 and provide a more elegant and flexible way to provide completely RESTful access for controllers. To get started see the new routing guide.

Brand new Action Mailer

Action Mailer was previously a bit of a hybrid, part controller, part model. Rails 3 sees Action Mailer completely rewritten purely as a controller, it now behaves much more like Action Controller. The new Action Mailer guide describes how to get going.

New query engine for Active Record

Active Record has adopted a new query engine to make complex queries more consistent and manageable. Execution of queries is now delayed until actually required and not when defined. For an introduction to the new query engine check out the new new Active Record guide.

Bundler

Traditionally, managing the dependencies for your Rails app deployment can be a bit of a nightmare. While Capistrano, Rake and other partial solutions make automating things easier, they’re often not elegant or simple. Bundler provides a complete solution to managing gems, libraries, frameworks and plugins that your app depends on. The latest release of the Brightbox deployment gem offers full support for Bundler.

Other improvements include built in XSS protection, an official plugins API, Agnosticism with plugins, Active Model callbacks & validations, better handling of character encoding and many more. For a more comprehensive list of changes see the release notes.

Rails 3 on your Brightboxes

Getting up and running with Rails 3 on your Brightboxes should be as simple as you’re used to with your existing Rails 2 apps.

Read the rest of this entry »

Ruby Enterprise 1.8.7-2010.02 Packages for Ubuntu Hardy & Lucid 16 Jun 10

We’ve built new 32 & 64bit Ruby Enterprise 1.8.7-2010.02 packages for Ubuntu Hardy and Lucid. The 2010.02 release of Ruby EE includes a number of backported fixes for critical bugs in Ruby 1.8.7p249 and we recommend users currently using our 2010.01 packages upgrade immediately.

For further information on using these packages see the release announcement for our Ruby EE 2010.01 packages.

Ruby Enterprise 1.8.7-2010.01 Packages for Ubuntu Hardy & Lucid 17 May 10

We’ve built  new 32bit and 64bit Ruby Enterprise 1.8.7-2010.01 packages for Ubuntu Hardy and Lucid. The new packages are now the default on new Lucid beta boxes. For Hardy, as before these packages are quite a major change from the default Hardy Ruby interpreter,which is 1.8.6, so we recommend you test thoroughly before putting it into production.

As with our other Ruby EE packages, they upgrade (i.e replace) the standard 1.8 Ruby installation. This means all your gems stay the same, and everything on your system immediately starts using them (Phusion’s own Ubuntu packages do not work like this).

These packages are also the best way to get Ruby 1.8.7 on Hardy, which you’ll need if you’re playing with Rails 3.

If you’re on a Hardy based Brightbox, just create or edit /etc/apt/sources.list.d/brightbox-rubyee.list to contain the rubyee-testing component like so:

deb http://apt.brightbox.net/ hardy rubyee-testing

If you’re on one of our Lucid beta boxes provisioned before today, simply create /etc/apt/sources.list.d/brightbox-rubyee.list and add the rubyee component:

deb http://apt.brightbox.net/ lucid rubyee

Finally, update and upgrade libruby1.8:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install libruby1.8 irb1.8 libopenssl-ruby1.8 libreadline-ruby1.8 rdoc1.8 ruby1.8

If you’re not on a Brightbox, see the instructions on our wiki first. The wiki also documents how to revert back to the old packages.