Using the Firebug addon YSlow from Yahoo I managed to tune site performance a little more by adding 'expires' to the nginx.conf file

location ~* ^.+.(jpg|jpeg|gif|js)$ { root /var/www/apps/myapp/public; access_log off; expires 30d; }

What this basically does is tell NGINX that any files of type jpg, jpeg, gif, and js with the root dir specified shouldn't be logged for access and have an expires value set to 30 days.

As most of the images I use on-site don't change that much this works perfect for me.

Updated my NGINX example files in the [CODE DOWNLOADS] area so you can grab a copy.

More tips located at...

• Zhesto Nginx notes
• Nginx Full Example 1
• Nginx Full Example 2

So you’ve deployed your first app to your nice lil’ Linux box via Capistrano, wahey!!

Now presuming you don’t really want to dedicate each server to one app alone, how would you get more than one app on there?

Here’s how,

Apache 2 .Conf

remote onto your server and edit the apache2 .conf file

/usr/local/apache2/conf/httpd.conf

• look for a line saying ServerName
• append the server’s IP address to the end of this
• un-comment it

now when you try restarting apache remotely it’ll know where it is.

next check down the bottom of the file for:

• Listen 80
• Include conf/apps/
• NameVirtualHost * :80

this tells Apache which port to listen to for incoming http requests and to load the config files in the conf/apps/ dir on startup.

Editing your Apps Deploy.rb

Now before you deploy your second app to the new server you must make sure it’ll use a different proxy port. Now by default your first app’l have used 8000 and 8001 so the obvious choice is to use 9000 and 9001.

So, navigate to your second ruby apps /config/ dir and edit it’s deploy.rb file

secondapp/config/deploy.rb

• first off, you can copy & paste bits from your first apps deploy.rb to make your second, just remember to change the svn repository location to default (as you’ll make your own) and change your apps name.
• look for => set :apache_proxy_port, 8000 and change it to 9000

deploy your 2nd app

in your second apps dir using the capistrano + deprec gems,

• cap deprec_setup
• cap setup_scm <= this’ll give you a new svn location for your app, add it to your deploy.rb file
• cap deploy_with_migrations
• cap restart_apache

afterwards you should have 2 ruby apps running on the same server!

If you get problems…

Now life isn’t perfect so chances are you’re gonna run into problems, so here’s some common commands and gotcha’s to help you,

Mongrel Complains .PID files already exist!

• …ssh in and goto /var/www/apps/secondapp/current/tmp/ and run: rm *.pid

How Do I Re-Start Mongrel?

• …navigate to app root & run: cap restart_mongrel_cluster

Second App keeps pointing to first, ARGH!!!

• …ssh in and goto /usr/local/apache2/conf/apps/
• …run: nano secondapp.conf
• …make sure <VirtualHost *:80> and it’s balancemember is using 9000 and 9001

Restart Server?

• …ssh in and run shutdown -r now

Restart Mongrel + Apache?

• …navigate to first app and run: cap restart_mongrel_cluster
• …goto second app my run: cap restart_mongrel_cluster
• …run: cap restart_apache

If you still get problems drop me a line and i’ll try to help,

Best of luck,

John.