Capistrano2 Recipe for Slicehost

After moving from DreamHost over to Media Temple a few months ago, I ran into some issues with the Rails Containers and have since moved on to Slicehost. I’m extremely happy over there, and I’d recommend them to anyone not afraid of the command line.

Since my Capistrano Recipe for Media Temple still gets a fair amount of traffic, I figured I might as well share my new Capistrano 2 Recipe for Slicehost – specifically Debian Etch.

set :application, "eldorado"
set :repository,  "http://eldorado.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/"
set :deploy_to, "/home/eldorado"
set :deploy_via, :export
set :user, 'root'

ssh_options[:port] = 22

role :app, "000.00.00.000"
role :web, "000.00.00.000"
role :db,  "000.00.00.000", :primary => true

after 'deploy:update_code', 'deploy:upload_database_yml'
after 'deploy:update_code', 'deploy:create_symlinks'

namespace :deploy do
  task :restart do
    run "/var/lib/gems/1.8/bin/mongrel_rails stop -P #{shared_path}/log/mongrel.8000.pid"
    run "/var/lib/gems/1.8/bin/mongrel_rails start -d -e production -p 8000 -P log/mongrel.8000.pid -c #{release_path}"
  end
end

namespace :deploy do
  task :upload_database_yml do
    put(File.read('config/database.yml'), "#{release_path}/config/database.yml", :mode => 0444)
  end
end

namespace :deploy do
  task :create_symlinks do
    %w{avatars files headers}.each do |share|
      run "rm -rf #{release_path}/public/#{share}"
      run "mkdir -p #{shared_path}/system/#{share}"
      run "ln -nfs #{shared_path}/system/#{share} #{release_path}/public/#{share}"
    end
  end
end

While we’re at it, here’s the accompanying Apache config:

ServerName 127.0.0.1
NameVirtualHost *:80

	ServerName example.com
	ServerAlias www.example.com
	DocumentRoot /var/www/eldorado

		Options FollowSymLinks
		AllowOverride None
		Order allow,deny
		Allow from all

	RewriteEngine On

		BalancerMember http://127.0.0.1:8000

		Order deny,allow
		Allow from .example.com

	# Check for maintenance file and redirect all requests
	RewriteCond %{DOCUMENT_ROOT}/system/maintenance.html -f
	RewriteCond %{SCRIPT_FILENAME} !maintenance.html
	RewriteRule ^.*$ /system/maintenance.html [L]

	# Rewrite index to check for static
	RewriteRule ^/$ /index.html [QSA] 

	# Rewrite to check for Rails cached page
	RewriteRule ^([^.]+)$ $1.html [QSA]

	# Redirect all non-static requests to cluster
	RewriteCond %{DOCUMENT_ROOT}/%{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
	RewriteRule ^/(.*)$ balancer://mongrel_cluster%{REQUEST_URI} [P,QSA,L]

	ErrorLog /home/eldorado/shared/log/error_log
	CustomLog /home/eldorado/shared/log/access_log combined

	RewriteLog /home/eldorado/shared/log/rewrite_log
	RewriteLogLevel 9

Of course, this would require creating a symlink in /var/www/example to your installation’s “current” directory, as set up by Capistrano:

ln -s /home/eldorado/current/public /var/www/example

This work was done on behalf of El Dorado, an open-source Rails forum I’ve been hacking away at for the last few months. I’ll post more about that soon, but you can start playing with the beta version now.

There’s also a live version of the app, which is (hopefully) up and running over at NewAthens.org. NewAthens was formerly running on a hodgepodge of PunBB, WordPress, PmWiki, Advanced Poll, and Coppermine. El Dorado represents the beginning of my attempt to create a full stack community site in Rails.

The existing database from the PunBB forum was successfully imported on Saturday using some handy Rake tasks I created, as were all of the user-uploaded files, etc. The resulting database has around 35,000 rows, and it’s been up and running without any major problems for a week now. Huzzah!