We’ve built Ubuntu packages for the latest release of Passenger, 3.0.8. They’re available now on our apt repository and our Launchpad ppa. Instructions on how to get set up are on our wiki as usual.
Updated NGINX Passenger packages will follow shortly (they’ll be available via a separate ppa)
We’ve updated our NGINX packages to NGINX v1.0.0 and Passenger 3.0.7. They’re now hosted on Launchpad.net, which makes it dead easy to use in Ubuntu.
We’ve also fixed the dependency problems that occurred in the past, where a newer version of Passenger broke the older NGINX packages. These NGINX packages now strictly depend on the Passenger packages, and we’ve put them in their own Launchpad archive so they’re always guaranteed to work (even if they ever lag behind the Apache packages).
You can add the PPA and install NGINX like this:
sudo apt-add-repository ppa:brightbox/passenger-nginx
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install nginx-full
You’ll then need to enable the Passenger module, which can be usually done like this:
cat <<EOF > /etc/nginx/conf.d/passenger.conf
passenger_root /usr/lib/phusion-passenger;
EOFWe’ve also added our other Apache Passenger packages to Launchpad too (with Hardy support), just use:
sudo apt-add-repository ppa:brightbox/passengerWe’ll keep our own apt repository in sync with Launchpad for Hardy and Lucid too, in case you prefer that (use the passenger-nginx component for the nginx passenger packages).
Happy Passengering! (I’m pretty certain that’s not a real verb. It might be a proper verb. I’m pretty certain there is no such thing as a proper verb).
Phusion Passenger 3.0.0 was released back in October. It’s up to 55% faster and sports new stability features, which should keep your site up even if a faulty app instance causes problems (such as “out of memory” errors).
We’ve now got Ubuntu Hardy and Lucid packages available on our apt repository and we consider it ready for production use. Brightbox customers can upgrade from Passengr 2.x simply by running these commands on their Brightboxes:
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install -qy libapache2-mod-passengerIf you’ve not got a Brightbox, you’ll need to add our apt repository key and config first. You can read more about it on our wiki.
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.
There are a number of advantages to 64-bit architectures.
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.
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.
Available from today, you can now choose either Ubuntu Hardy or Lucid as the base OS when building new Brightboxes.
Ubuntu Lucid is the latest Long Term Support (LTS) version of Ubuntu with security fixes provided until April 2015. It brings a whole bunch of upgrades such as Ruby 1.8.7, Monit 5, Apache 2.2.14 and new packages like CouchDB, Sphinx, Chef, RabbitMQ, MongoDB, ejabberd and many more.
We’ve treated it to the usual Brightbox Ruby deployment tune-up, including our Ruby Enterprise Edition 1.8.7-2010.01 packages. Updated Phusion Passenger packages are now available on our newly Lucid-enabled apt repository.
When buying a new Brightbox, you’ll see a combo box that you can use to select Lucid (Hardy is still currently the default). Upgrading from Hardy to Lucid isn’t really viable due to the way Hardy boxes handle kernels, 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 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-testingIf 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 rubyeeFinally, 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.
You may have thought the time is wrong on your server. Well, it isn’t really, it is just that we prefer to set the default time on Brightboxes to Coordinated Universal Time (UTC).
This is generally considered to be best practice where ever a server is geographically located, however, it may cause a problem if you are hosting a geographically specific web application.
If your web application requires a different time-zone such as CET, BST or PST, or Daylight Saving Time is giving you a headache, take a look at our Wiki page for a timely introduction to the subject of time-zones on Brightboxes.
Phusion released Passenger 2.2.10 this week, fixing some bundler compatibility bugs and a file descriptor bug that could lead to “mysterious crashes”.
We’ve built our Ubuntu Hardy packages for i386 and AMD64 architectures which are now available from the Brightbox apt repository. We’ve also upgraded our librack-ruby packages to 1.1.0.
The Phusion team released Passenger 2.2.9 today, which adds support for Rails 3, the GEM bundler, and fixes a couple of bugs. As usual Brightbox are providing Ubuntu Hardy packages for i386 and AMD64 architectures, available now from the Brightbox apt repository.
This package won’t actually support Rails 3 just yet though as we’ve yet to package and test the librack 1.1.0, which Rails 3 depends on. We’re working on it now and once we’re happy with it we’ll add new packages to our repository as usual.