CranialPulse: 2010

Monday, December 13, 2010

Note to self: How to install ImageMagick using MacPorts

sudo port install tiff -macosx imagemagick +q8 +gs +wmf

Install MySQL and Sphinx on Mac OS X 10.6 64bit

This is at least the fourth time I've done this in the past 3 years and every time it's slightly different. My last install I managed to get running using the MySQL 64 bit dmg. Prior to that I had always used MacPorts to install MySQL. However since moving to a 64bit machine, the MacPorts install of MySQL did not play nice with the MySQL Ruby gem.

First things first, download MySQL. I downloaded mysql-5.1.53-osx10.6-x86_64.dmg. It's a 77M download and takes a few minutes depending on your download speed.

**Note this assumes you do not have any currently installed versions of MySQL.

Click on the installer and run the mysql-5.1.53-osx10.6-x86_64.pkg Accept all the defaults and install. If it was successful you should see the install directory in /usr/local

If you want MySQl to start automatically, also install the startup item by running the MySQLStartupItem.pkg that was also part of the dmg you just downloaded. You can verify it installed correctly by checking /etc/hostconfig to contain MYSQLCOM=-YES-

Startup MySQL (taken from the ReadMe.txt):

shell> cd /usr/local/mysql
shell> sudo ./bin/mysqld_safe
(ENTER YOUR PASSWORD, IF NECESSARY)
(PRESS CONTROL-Z)
shell> bg
(PRESS CONTROL-D OR ENTER "EXIT" TO EXIT THE SHELL)

Once it's running, DO NOT FORGET TO SET THE ROOT PASSWORD!!

./bin/mysqladmin -u root password 'your password here'

Now for Sphinx ....

At this point, I did try and install Sphinx using MacPorts ... however it does not recognize the MySQL install and tries to install a MacPorts version of MySQL. So we will download v0.9.9 and compile it ourselves.

Once the source is downloaded, extract it and then open a terminal to the extracted contents.
I extracted mine to ~/Downloads/sphinx-0.9.9 So at the terminal I ran

cd ~/Downloads/sphinx-0.9.9

Then we need to configure sphinx by running

sudo ./configure --prefix=/usr/local/sphinx --with-mysql

(Without sudo, the script cannot access everything it needs to configure sphinx.) The --prefix option tells it where to install. The --with-mysql is a default option, but I like to ensure it compiles for MySQL explicitly.

If it was successful, you should see:

configuration done
------------------

You can now run 'make' to build Sphinx binaries,
and then run 'make install' to install them.

At which point you can run

sudo make

and then

sudo make install

You should now see in /usr/local a sphinx directory. And unless you saw any errors, you have now installed Sphinx. You can also run

which searchd

to verify it installed properly. If which returns nothing, something went wrong. Otherwise, happy indexing!!

Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Running Rails on IIS 7 using FastCGI

Recently I took a journey into IronRuby.Rack and found that it's not quite ready for prime time yet. However, what does work is URL rewriting and FastCGI on IIS7. For the record, if you can avoid doing this, please do!

Props to these references for getting me started.

Here is what -I- did

Enable FastCGI support in IIS7

http://learn.iis.net/page.aspx/246/using-fastcgi-to-host-php-applications-on-iis-70/#EnableFastCGI

Install URL Rewrite module

Using the Web Platform Installer I installed the URLRewrite module.

Install Ruby

Obtain the Ruby MSI Installer for windows and run it keeping all the defaults (ex. Install location => C:\Ruby)

Update Rubygems

Open a terminal window and run the following:

gem update --system

Install Rails

gem install rails --include-dependencies

Install Sqlite3

NOTE: This approach seems to work fine for 32 bit Windows installs, not for 64 bit.
To get started grab sqlitedll-3_6_23.zip from the sqllite website.
Expand the zip and copy both files (sqlite3.def, sqlite3.dll) to C:\Ruby\bin
Then install the sqlite gem by running:

gem install sqlite3-ruby --include-dependencies

For additional information on this step you can refer to this post.
Verify the step worked by running

gem list

Put a Rails app on your machine

At this point, we are getting close. You can either create a brand new Rails app by running

rails myapp

rake db:migrate

Or copy an existing Rails app to your machine.

Setup up web site in IIS7

Open the IIS management application.
Add a new website and point it to your Rails sites public folder.
Click on the website and you should see a "Handler Mappings" option. Click it and then select "Add Module Mapping ...".

Set the Name to Ruby via FastCGI

Set the Request Path to dispatch.fcgi

Set the Module to FastCGIModule

Set the Executable to C:\Ruby\bin\ruby.exe|C:\myapp\public\dispatch.fcgi development

I also added an entry in my hosts file for my Rails app.

127.0.0.1  myapp

Add URL Rewriting Rules

In the same section as the "Handler Mappings", there should be a "URL Rewrite" option, open it.
Select "Import Rules ..." and paste the following in

# Redirect all requests not available on the filesystem to Rails
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^$ index.html [QSA]
RewriteRule ^([^.]+)$ $1.html [QSA]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ dispatch.fcgi [QSA,L]

It should show you the rules in the TreeView with green checkmarks. If so, then save and apply those rules.

Create your dispatch.fcgi

I used this simple dispatcher for my Rails app, use it to get you started.

require File.dirname(__FILE__) + "/../config/environment"
require 'fcgi_handler'

RailsFCGIHandler.process! nil, 10

Save it as dispatch.fcgi in your Rails apps public folder.

Permissions!!

If you were to view the site now, you would probably be met with a 500 error. To resolve this, add NETWORK SERVICE to your Rails app folder and give them Full Control.
This part of the process is a pain and I'm sure it's slightly different for everyone depending on their server config and version of Windows.If NETWORK SERVICE does not solve it, verify that
it is a permissions problem by allowing Everyone access to the Rails app. If that allows you to load the site, then REMOVE Everyone and try to narrow it down to the required account.
Reset IIS

64 bit

If you are running on 64 bit, you can enable 32-bit applications in the application pool for your site under Advanced Settings.

My problems

SQLite3 gave me all kinds of trouble. I finally abandoned it and went right to MySQL. Here is the error I was seeing in my log:

SQLite3 problem
/!\ FAILSAFE /!\ Wed Mar 17 09:25:47 -0400 2010
Status: 500 Internal Server Error
127: The specified procedure could not be found. - Init_sqlite3 ./sqlite3.dll

So I downloaded and installed MySql and selected mysql-essential-5.1.45-winx64.msi
I then changed my database.yml to use mysql instead of sqlite3 and installed the mysql gem

gem install mysql

but once again, 32 bit caused a problem and I had to download another dll and copy it to C:\Ruby\bin For instructions on where to get the dll look here.

Finished!

So that is how I accomplished getting my Rails app running on IIS7 with Fast CGI and URL Rewrite. Good luck to you and please refer to the references I posted above to learn more about the hows and whys. Also note that those posts refer to manually editing web.config, please just use the IIS admin to edit it. For reference though, mine looked like this in the end:

Monday, March 15, 2010

IIS + Ruby & Rails

I've been trying to get Rails up and and running on IIS and have had trouble finding good documentation on how to accomplish that using IronRuby.Rack. Recently Ivan Puerto Carrero posted a reply on the IronRuby mailing list describing how to get it working. I'm sharing that post here to add more visibility to the solution and will be giving it a try tonight. Hope this helps others find their way through the IIS/Ruby adventure.

Date: Sun, 14 Mar 2010 20:38:05 +0100
From: Ivan Porto Carrero
To: ironruby-core@rubyforge.org
Subject: Re: [Ironruby-core] IIS + IronRuby

but what I did was create a new solution in visual studio
Added references to the files from the ironruby rc3 distribution
Add the files from Merlin\Main\Hosts\IronRuby.Rack\*.cs to the solution

Applied this patch

compiled as release

Added a bin folder to my public folder and copied the resulting assemblies there.

Added a web.config much like this one. But I changed the values of LibraryPaths and GemPath to point to my ironruby install based on C:\ironruby\

I also changed the value of AppRoot to ..

and my config.ru in the RAILS_ROOT contains:

ENV['RAILS_ENV'] = 'production'
require "config/environment"

use Rails::Rack::LogTailer
use Rails::Rack::Static
run ActionController::Dispatcher.new

That should make your application work on IIS but there is still an open problem around it not serving the images.