Previously I wrote an article on how to upgrade your copy of Ruby + install Readline, so glad I’m rewriting it because that really sucked.
So here’s a real ‘i did it and it works’ guide, re-done, for upgrading your copy of Ruby on Rails from 1.8.whatever to the latest 1.8.6 on your Ubuntu Linux box on a server slice from Slicehost.com
Disable your website
First off, use Capistrano to inform people your server & site is down for maintenance, by opening a terminal window and moving into your ruby apps dir,
cap disable_web
Remote to your server + edit sources.list
Next remote into your server by using SSH at the prompt type,
ssh root@mybox.com
(change mybox.com to whatever your server’s hooked to)
type in your root account password and hit enter. Now at the prompt,
cd ..
ls
do ls to check your in the root of your machine, you should see a usr, etc, var, directories. now,
cd etc/apt
vi sources.list
now you should be in your ubuntu sources file, showing the network places / paths your box will go to to find the latest server updates etc.
make sure the two lines below are un-commented (remove the # at the start)
deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu dapper universe
deb-src http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu dapper universe
hit shift+i to goto edit mode in the VI editor, edit the file and hit esc then type :wq and hit enter to save the file. now navigate to the root again,
cd /
Upgrade your Linux Server
update your server’s software repository, dictionary.
apt-get update
and install any required server software updates
apt-get upgrade
Install Ruby 1.8.6
now pull off the latest ruby sourcefiles (1.8.6), extract them to their own directory and move into them.
wget ftp://ftp.ruby-lang.org/pub/ruby/ruby-1.8.6.tar.gz
tar zxvf ruby-1.8.6.tar.gz
cd ruby-1.8.6
now your in your new ruby source directory, configure the source and make the native binary files
./configure
make
now install ruby and the ruby docs
make install
once this all finishes you should be able to kill the SSH connection by typing
exit
Check Ruby Version
then re-connect via SSH, and run,
ruby -v
and see ruby 1-8-6 displayed, bingo, you have a new ruby build on your server.
however, as you’ve built this not using apt-get you’re going to have to make sure ubuntu uses your new version and not it’s old one,
to do this edit your profile file
nano /etc/profile
and add..
export PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:$PATH
now when you reboot it’ll take your new ruby rather than the old 1.8.4
End your SSH connection by typing,
exit
Reboot your Server
Now goto slicehost.com, login to your admin console and request to soft-reboot your slice, should take 2-3 minutes. ping it using
ping www.mybox.com
you’ll see your machine pinging the server, stall for a while (it rebooting) and pinging again, your good to go now.
Re-deploy your ruby app
Go back to your terminal window and within your ruby app, run
cap deploy_with_migrations
This will deploy the latest svn version of your app to the server and more importantly reboot your mongrel server.
Turn your website back on
This should checkout ok, now run this below to remove the maintenance holding-page
cap enable-web
Hopefully things will go right and you’ll have a brand new build running on your linux box.
All the best,
John.
