Creating a rails app on Digital Ocean in 15minutes

Learn how to migrate your ruby-on-rails app from Heroku to Digital Ocean.

UPDATED VERSION IS HERE

Even thought this post is not directly related to IOT technologies, running a webserver/webapplication is often required. Running on Heroku can be quite expensive especially if the app is not getting as much traffic/revenues as expected.

Simple way:

First we need to add more swap memory:

sudo fallocate -l 2G /swapfile
sudo chmod 600 /swapfile

sudo mkswap /swapfile
sudo swapon /swapfile


echo '/swapfile none swap sw 0 0' | sudo tee -a /etc/fstab

You can check the swap space now (Optional):
free -h

Now let's install everything:

sudo apt-get update
command curl -sSL https://rvm.io/mpapis.asc | gpg --import -
curl -L get.rvm.io | bash -s stable
source /etc/profile.d/rvm.sh


rvm requirements
rvm install 2.4.1
sudo apt-get install -y libcurl4-openssl-dev nodejs
rvm rubygems current
gem install rails
gem install passenger
rvmsudo passenger-install-nginx-module

Install RVM:

From this tutorial

sudo apt-get install -y software-properties-common

sudo apt-add-repository -y ppa:rael-gc/rvm
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install -y rvm

Create a user :

You can follow this tutorial

  • useradd appname_production

Add user to sudoers:

  • usermod -aG sudo appname_production

Install postgresql:

From these notes : Creating user and adding access in Postgresql

  • sudo apt-get -y install postgresql postgresql-contrib

Start postgres:

  • sudo -u postgres psql

And run the following command

  • createuser owning_user
  • Exit postgres (CTRL-D)

Setting up the database:

SSH into your machine
From shell do :

  • sudo -i -u postgres

  • createuser --interactive
    Here you should follow the questions. You will have the following questions :

    • Enter name of role to add: user1
    • Shall the new role be a superuser? (y/n) y

  • createdb appname_production

More info here:
Install PSQL for digital ocean

Copy database (if you have one already)

If you're migrating and have an existing database, here are the instructions. If not, then skip to next section.

Update the database with scp (from your mac):

  • scp budata.sql root@serverip:/

Log into your user name :

  • psql databasename < data_base_dump

Now we can access the database this way:
sudo -u appname_production psql

Change the password:
sudo -u appname_production psql

appname_production-# \password appname_production

Update the config/database.yml

Install RUBY 2.4.1:

rvm install ruby-2.4.1
rvm --default use ruby-2.4.1
gem install bundler --no-rdoc --no-ri
sudo apt-get install -y nodejs && sudo ln -sf /usr/bin/nodejs /usr/local/bin/node

Install rails :

Reference

gem search '^rails$' --all
gem install rails -v 5.1.4

Install more tools:

Make sure you exit POSTGRESQL with CTRL-D.

sudo apt-get -y install rake curl gnupg build-essential  libreadline-dev libxslt-dev libxml2-dev python 

gem install libv8 -v '3.11.8.12'


sudo apt-get install -y libv8-dev libmagick++-dev webp imagemagick libpq-dev ruby-railties

Install passenger packages:

FOr installing passenger and rails, we are following this guide:

sudo apt-key adv --keyserver hkp://keyserver.ubuntu.com:80 --recv-keys 561F9B9CAC40B2F7
sudo apt-get install -y apt-transport-https ca-certificates

Add our APT repository

 sudo sh -c 'echo deb https://oss-binaries.phusionpassenger.com/apt/passenger xenial main > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/passenger.list'  
 sudo apt-get update

Install Passenger + Nginx

 sudo apt-get install -y nginx-extras passenger

Enable passenger in nginx conf:

In file : /etc/nginx/nginx.conf
Uncomment the following line :
# include /etc/nginx/passenger.conf;

Now go into your user:
Change the password for user :
passwd appname_production

Then log into it:
su - appname_production

old :

 rvm install ruby-2.4.1 
 sudo apt-get install ruby

 sudo gem install libv8 -v '3.11.8.12' -- --with-system-v8 
 sudo gem install libv8 -v 3.11.8.17 -- --with-system-v8 

* `rvm install ruby-2.4.1`
* `gem install bundler`
* `gem install nokogiri -v '1.5.11'`
* `gem install libv8 -v '3.11.8.12' -- --with-system-v8`
* `gem install libv8 -v 3.11.8.17 -- --with-system-v8`

* `gem install passenger`
* `sudo apt-get install libcurl4-openssl-dev`
* `sudo apt-get install nodejs`

new:

 sudo apt-get install -y build-essential patch ruby-dev zlib1g-dev liblzma-dev

 sudo gem install nokogiri -v '1.5.11' 

 export rvmsudo_secure_path=1

 sudo gem install passenger 
 sudo apt-get install -y libcurl4-openssl-dev nodejs

NOw install nginx:

rvmsudo passenger-install-nginx-module

If you have issues with ruby racer:

gem uninstall libv8 gem install therubyracer -v '0.11.3' gem install libv8 -v '3.11.8.12' -- --with-system-v8

Installing rbenv:

  • rbenv install 2.1.1
  • rbenv global 2.1.1

Install RVM:

Extra Notes:

Running your app:

Setting up your db:
RAILS_ENV=production rake db:create

Testing you app in production:
RAILS_ENV=production rails server

App is located in : /var/www

restarting app:
sudo service nginx restart

Logs for app are in :
/var/log/nginx/access.log

Create a user for PG SQL:

Create a user (stackoverflow:

Loading another database:

I have another database on heroku. I can get it this way :

heroku config:get DATABASE_URL --app appname

The output has the format:

postgres://<username>:<password>@<host_name>:<port>/<dbname>.

You can save the content this way :

pg_dump --host=<host_name> --port=<port> --username=<username> --password --dbname=<dbname> > output.sql

And load it up again :

Loading into database:
psql databasename < data_base_dump

Change permission of user:

  • sudo -u postgres -i
  • psql
  • ALTER USER new_user CREATEDB;

Adding swap space to your app:

https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-add-swap-on-ubuntu-14-04

Install Jenkins:
Installing jenkins on digital ocean:

Securing the app:

how-to-secure-nginx-on-ubuntu-14-04

References: