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!

Passenger 3.0.17 and NGINX 1.2.3 packages for Ubuntu 12 Sep 12

We’ve just published Phusion Passenger 3.0.17 packages for Ubuntu on our repositories (Hardy, Lucid, Natty, Oneiric and Precise).

We’ve also updated our NGINX packages to 1.2.3, and they now include Weibin Yao’s http upstream check module.

They’re now available on our standard and our ruby-ng repositories, so you can use it all with Ruby 1.9.3 too (on Lucid, Natty, Oneiric and Precise).

Remember, the ruby-ng repository is “all in one”, so it provides Ruby, Passenger and NGINX all in one repository. Our separate passenger repository provides Apache Passenger packages only (without Ruby 1.9 support) and the passenger-nginx repository provides NGINX+Passenger only (also without Ruby 1.9 support).

Passenger 3.0.14 and NGINX 1.2.2 packages for Ubuntu 3 Aug 12

We’ve just published Phusion Passenger 3.0.14 packages for Ubuntu on our repositories (Hardy, Lucid, Natty, Oneiric and Precise). We’ve also updated our NGINX packages to 1.2.2.

They’re now available on our standard and our ruby-ng repositories, so you can use it all with Ruby 1.9.3 too (on Lucid, Natty, Oneiric and Precise).

Remember, the ruby-ng repository is “all in one”, so it provides Ruby, Passenger and NGINX all in one repository. Our separate passenger repository provides Apache Passenger packages only (without Ruby 1.9 support) and the passenger-nginx repository provides NGINX+Passenger only (also without Ruby 1.9 support).

We’ll continue to maintain the passenger and passenger-nginx repositories so as not to force anyone to have to switch to the ruby-ng repositories (and for anyone who still needs Ubuntu Hardy support), but we now recommend using the ruby-ng repositories for all your future Ruby on Ubuntu needs :)

If you’re not already a Brightbox customer and want professional support for Ruby deployment, drop us a line. And don’t forget about our new cloud service too.

Next Generation Ruby packages for Ubuntu 11 Apr 12

We’ve been busy at work on new packages to provide the very latest versions of Ruby and Rubygems for Ubuntu.

We’ve been providing optimized Ruby 1.8 and Rubygems 1.3.7 packages for Ubuntu for years now but some technical issues prevented us from providing 1.9.3 packages alongside them. So we started out afresh from the very latest Debian 1.8.7 and 1.9.3 packages, and added:

• Ruby Enterprise Edition patches for 1.8.7-358 (2012.02)
• Built Ruby 1.9.3 with Google’s high performance memory allocator, tcmalloc
• Added Sokolov Yura‘s performance patches for 1.9.3
• Added Narihiro Nakamura’s Bitmap Marking garbage collector (backported by Sakolov Yura)
• Patched Ruby 1.9.3 to export the right symbols to work with ruby-debug

So this gives you Ruby 1.8.7, Ruby 1.9.3 and Rubygems 1.8.21 on Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid through to the upcoming Ubuntu 12.04 Precise. You can install both Ruby 1.8.7 and 1.9.3 alongside each other and switch between them effortlessly. We’ve also updated our Passenger packages to work with both versions of Ruby (and our NGINX Passenger packages too).

All the above packages are available right now for testing in our experimental Launchpad package repository. You can add the repository to your servers like this:

sudo apt-add-repository ppa:brightbox/ruby-ng
sudo apt-get update

and you can install or upgrade ruby like this:

sudo apt-get install ruby rubygems ruby-switch

If you’re upgrading, some packages have been replaced so you will see apt removing some packages (such as rubygems1.8, irb1.8 and others) – don’t panic :)

To install Ruby 1.9.3:

sudo apt-get install ruby1.9.1

More about the packages and how to use them on our wiki.

We’re already using these packages in a few places and have found them stable but they need more testing. Whether you’re a customer or not, please do have a play with them and report back with any successes or failures (to support@brightbox.co.uk).

An ideal way to play with them would be on a Brightbox Cloud server ;)

NGINX 1.1.17 with Passenger 3.0.11 for Ubuntu 29 Mar 12

We’ve just pushed new versions of our Phusion Passenger enabled NGINX packages for Ubuntu to the repositories and they’re available right now for installation.

Notably, NGINX version 1.1.17 fixes the recent information leakage bug (CVE-2012-1180), so this is an important upgrade.

As always, you can use our PPA, with versions from Lucid through to Oneiric, or our own repository with Lucid versions.

Documentation is available on our wiki.

Passenger 3.0.8 Ubuntu Packages 5 Aug 11

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)

NGINX Passenger 3 Ubuntu packages 5 May 11

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;
EOF

We’ve also added our other Apache Passenger packages to Launchpad too (with Hardy support), just use:

sudo apt-add-repository ppa:brightbox/passenger

We’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).

More in-depth documentation is available on our wiki.

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).

Passenger 3.0.0 packages for Ubuntu Hardy and Lucid 15 Nov 10

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-passenger

If 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.

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.