Now with Ubuntu 8.04 LTS Hardy powers 2 Oct 08

We’ve now switched to Ubuntu Hardy (8.04 LTS) as our default Brightbox image.

We’ve been using Hardy for months now to power our managed products and clusters and it’s proved very stable.  Some of the highlights:

• Ruby 1.8.6 as standard
• Apache 2.2.8 as standard
• Imagemagick 6.3 as standard (roll on the new rmagick gems!)
• Git 1.5.4 as standard
• Better virtualisation support - we can now live upgrade ram on Brightboxes without a reboot

It still comes pre-configured for Rails deployment and we’re still providing improved and extra packages where necessary (such as nginx 6.31).

We’re also still supporting our Ubuntu Dapper machines and can still pre-install Dapper for customers who are already using it on their other boxes.

Upgrading

Due to the way Brightboxes are built, you can’t easily upgrade your Dapper box to Hardy.  Currently, the only supported way to upgrade is to file a support ticket with us and we’ll rebuild your Brightbox as Hardy.  This will require downtime and redeployment of your app (a good time to move to the new Brightbox deployment gem if you haven’t already)

“uninitialized constant REXML::VERSION” with Rails 2.1.1 and Rails 2.2 10 Sep 08

We’ve found a minor problem with Rails 2.1.1 (and Rails 2.2) on our Brightboxes.

Because we use Ubuntu Dapper, which ships with Ruby 1.8.4, it includes an earlier version of the REXML library (for XML processing). As you may know, there was a recent security vulnerability to do with the REXML library and these latest two versions of Rails include a fix for this.

Unfortunately, the library that ships with 1.8.4 is slightly incorrect. Ruby conventions state that a constant should be all capitals so, quite rightly, the Rails updates check for a constant called REXML::VERSION. However, in 1.8.4, the constant is actually called REXML::Version meaning that Rails falls over with an “uninitialized constant REXML::VERSION” error.

The quick fix is to manually edit /usr/lib/ruby/1.8/rexml/rexml.rb and add a new (correctly named constant). You will need to use sudo to edit the file, as it is owned by root; after editing the file should look something like:

module REXML
        Copyright = "Copyright © 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004 Sean Russell <ser@germane-software.com>"
        Date = "2005/224"
        Version = "3.1.3"
        VERSION = "3.1.3"
end

We are also looking at our options for a permanent fix for this issue.

Rails security vulnerability 26 Aug 08

If you’ve been following the Rails security list you’ll know that there has been a serious flaw uncovered in the REXML library that allows an easy Denial of Service attack on the vast majority of Rails applications.

The Ruby details are here: http://www.ruby-lang.org/en/news/2008/08/23/dos-vulnerability-in-rexml/ and the instructions for applying the monkey patch fix for Rails is on the security google group: http://groups.google.com/group/rubyonrails-security/browse_thread/thread/9fb60a1e22a88d30/330bcb96de877996#330bcb96de877996

Just to reiterate - this fault will affect the majority of Rails applications across all versions of Rails, whether you think you are processing XML or not, and we would urge all our customers (and all Rails users for that matter) to patch their applications until there is an upgrade to the Ruby libraries correcting the error.

Rails: so successful it’s starting to hurt? 2 Jun 08

One thing that we often hear from customers is how difficult it is find Rails developers. Which is funny since we also hear people saying how they’d love a job building Rails applications.

The well-being of the Rails community is important to us, so we’d like to try and do what we can to keep it bubbling along nicely :)

One of the ideas that came up was some sort of Rails training network that would help bridge any skills gap. But before we do anything, we want to understand whether there is actually a skills gap, or just an “expectation gap” in either price or experience (anybody with any sort of Rails commercial experience is almost certainly gainfully employed at a good rate at the moment).

So, we’d like to hear from you if…

1) You’re in the market for Rails talent and would either be interested in using a Rails training programme, or interested in talking to ‘graduates’ of such a programme or

2) You’re a developer and you’d be interested in signing up for a Rails training programme and potentially getting your name in front of Rails employers.

Drop us an email to hello [at] the brightbox uk domain - we’ll gauge interest and take it from there.