I recently had an idea for a small web application, and seeing as I’ve not spent as much time as I’ve wanted to using Rails – I opted to build it the latest version of Rails. A decision that caused far more grief than I expected.
If you are using Dreamhost’s PS offering (a managed VPS for those that don’t know), the seemingly simple task of getting a Rails 3 application up and running is actually quite complex. The root cause of this is that Dreamhost’s OS image is based on Debian etch, which was released in April 2009 and has since been replaced; which means etch has become fairly outdated.
Here’s the process I used, and so far it seems to be working quite well:
Domain Setup:
When adding your domain to the Dreamhost panel, you’ll want to enable Passenger.
Once your application is uploaded to the server, you’ll be greeted with a particularly unhelpful error message (something like “uninitialized constant Bundler“) from Passenger (or perhaps just a 500 error page).
Server Updates:
This is where the work starts, and gets somewhat ugly. As a warning, it’s quite possible that you could damage your configuration doing this; though thankfully you can restore your server to a working state within a few minutes from the Dreamhost panel should something go wrong. You’ll also need to have an “admin user” for this task, as much of what needs to be done has to be done as root.
First step: Get your PS up to date; even after performing a restore on my server, there were a number of updates that are available to be installed. So let’s start off by getting those out of the way.
sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get upgrade sudo apt-get -f install
Once you get past those three commands, the next step is to update SQLite to the latest version, as the version Dreamhost uses is quite old and won’t work with Rails 3.0 (well, to be accurate it won’t work with the latest version of sqlite3-ruby, which is the default database provider for Rails 3).
wget http://www.sqlite.org/sqlite-autoconf-3070400.tar.gz tar zxvf sqlite-autoconf-3070400.tar.gz cd sqlite-autoconf-3070400 sudo ./configure --bindir=/usr/bin --libdir=/usr/lib sudo make sudo make install
If you don’t update SQLite you’ll get an error like this:
sudo gem install sqlite3 Building native extensions. This could take a while... ERROR: Error installing sqlite3: ERROR: Failed to build gem native extension. /usr/bin/ruby1.8 extconf.rb checking for sqlite3.h... yes checking for sqlite3_libversion_number() in -lsqlite3... yes checking for rb_proc_arity()... no checking for sqlite3_initialize()... no sqlite3-ruby only supports sqlite3 versions 3.6.16+, please upgrade! *** extconf.rb failed ***
or if you install the updated version, but don’t force it to /usr/lib you’ll get an error like this:
sudo gem install sqlite3 Building native extensions. This could take a while... ERROR: Error installing sqlite3: ERROR: Failed to build gem native extension. /usr/bin/ruby1.8 extconf.rb checking for sqlite3.h... yes checking for sqlite3_libversion_number() in -lsqlite3... no sqlite3 is missing. Try 'port install sqlite3 +universal' or 'yum install sqlite3-devel' *** extconf.rb failed ***
Once that is taken care of SQLite, the rest is easy.
sudo gem update
At this point if you visit your new Rails site, it should be working!
Notes:
- I’ve not tested this extensively, and I’ve no idea if this breaks anything. All I can say for certain, if that all of my sites still work, but your mileage may vary. <Disclaimer />
- I was a fairly early Dreamhost PS adopter, and part way through this process I reset my server to get it back to a clean state. After resetting, I noticed some differences with the behavior of
apt-get(404s onupdateandupgradeare gone), so for other early adopters it may be necessary to perform a reset to get your servers configuration in-sync with the latest official setup. - I can’t say for a fact that this is completely necessary, though you’ll likely need to selectively update a few packages if you skip this step. Also, for me,
gemwas broken until I ransudo apt-get -f install. - Special thanks to Matt for helping me get this working; troubleshooting the SQLite install was more than a little time consuming.
When it comes to small business project management, Basecamp by 37signals has been the king of the hill for some time. Now though, there is an exciting new player in the field: Open Atrium. It’s a Drupal based open source project management system somewhat like Basecamp, though with many more features.
Open Atrium is new on the scene, with beta 1 being released just 4 days ago – though it’s already rather polished and seems to work well. While there are some hiccups with the installer and a disappointing lack of documentation, it’s still very easy to install and takes only a few minutes to get running.
It has all the major features that you would expect, plus a few extras such as a twitter-like shoutbox system. Here are the highlights:
- Blogging
- Calendar
- Dashboard
- Document Storage
- Task Management
Being open source and self-hosted adds some nice benefits; unlimited customization, full control of your data, and my favorite: can be installed on a non-public web server. Having you project management system sit behind a VPN is a great way to avoid data leaks and embarrassments.
I’m still debating which is best, Basecamp or Open Atrium – but if you want to save some money, Open Atrium is worth looking into.
It looks like the core Silverlight 3 tools are now available:
- Microsoft Expression Blend 3 + SketchFlow RC
- Microsoft® Silverlight™ 3 SDK
- Microsoft® Silverlight™ 3 Tools for Visual Studio 2008 SP1
- Deep Zoom Composer
Though the tools needed for development seem to be public, I’ve yet to see the end-user run-time; though I imagine we’ll see that in the release anticipated for tomorrow.
Time to have some fun. 
Update: Client run-time is now available.
Microsoft Expression Blend 3 + SketchFlow RC
We all know that Google is PigeonPowered™ – now, we have a search engine ran by trained monkeys. Well, not exactly monkeys, but semi-trained people. Yes, you heard that right. When you do a search, it doesn’t hit some massive database containing every web page known to man, it goes to a human for them to figure out.
If I didn’t know better, I’d call it an April-fools’ joke. But, alas, it’s not.
Here’s how it works: You type your query in a very Google-like homepage, but when you hit ‘Search with Guide’ (pressing ‘enter’ will get you a glorified set of InfoSpace results) instead of getting a list of results, you get a chat window. In that chat window you can tell the guide more about your search, and you might, eventually, get an answer. While there is some value to a human edited directory such as DMOZ, I can’t see a human built search engine working out.
I have to wonder how this will work out from the business side, this doesn’t seem to be the greatest business model, as it can’t be cheap to have an army of people sitting around searching for other people. It looks like their business model is based around selling ads, and while that is a high profit market, I can’t see it being enough to cover the expense of having the guides. It’ll be interesting to see how long they last.
Sorry for the rant, but I found this one just too odd to ignore.
I’ve been both a subscriber and fan of Valleyschwag since it was launched, that is, until yesterday. And not by my choice mind you, they canceled everybodies subscription. When the second issue was shipped in late May, they reported having over 1,500 members each paying $15 a month for the service. I can only guess what the subscriber count would look like now, after having a few months to grow.
They’ve thrown that all away now, sending the following notice to all the subscribers:
“We’d like you to be one of the first to know that we will soon unveil the Valleyschwag General Store, where you will be able to purchase future issues of our famous schwag bags. And by popular demand, we will be offering some of our most requested schwag items for sale.
This store replaces our subscription service, giving you more control over the issues and items you’d like to receive. We will notify you by email when a new issue of Valleyschwag is available, giving you the first opportunity to place an order at the General Store.
Since a subscription is no longer required we will automatically cancel your Paypal subscription if you haven’t already done so. To accomodate our members around the globe, the store will continue to accept Paypal as well as credit cards for all purchases.”
That’s right, they are now hoping that by sending out reminders and canceling the automatic payments, they will be able to stay afloat. They had guaranteed money in the bank every month, now, they’ll have to hope that people will remember to take time out of their busy day to buy the next issue. I don’t think they’ll see near the numbers they could with the subscription model.
One of the things I like about any subscription is that you don’t have to think about it, it just works. Once a month or so I get a package, no forms to fill out, no remembering to check and see if the next issue is ready, it’s just there. I think a lot of people feel this way, and I think this will be rather painful for the ValleySchwag team, and endanger the future of the business itself.
Valleyschwag was a really interesting concept, but I have to believe it grew too large, too quickly for the model to work. I wish the guys at RubyRed the best, but I believe the end is coming for the schwag express.
The third edition of ValleySchwag has arrived. Yet again, there is a nice collection of goodies – well worth the membership fee.
While a bit less loaded than last time , I’m still quite impressed with the package they’ve put together. The two big hits this time are the rather cool shirt from imeem and the laptop bag (see below) from MI6. While the bag doesn’t have the padding of my regular bag, it’s a lot lighter, so I know it’ll see some use.
All in all, I’m quite happy with this months package, and I’ll certainly be looking forward to the next round. For those interested, here’s a list of vendor’s that provided something cool for this months package:
- imeem – Mostly-cool t-shirt
- MI6 – The laptop bag pictured above.
- jeteye – A useful little pen (the clicky type, that are so useful for annoying those in near-by cubicles).
- Channel 9 – Microsoft’s Channel 9 provided a highly throw-able version of their mascot, Channel 9 Guy.
- Macromedia – A might-be-useful-someday key chain (bottom left corner of the picture above.
- There are also about 5 other companies that provided stickers.
