I needed to send an URI through Nginx to the backend servers (Mongrel) intact. However Nginx was constantly unescaping the URI , and removed slashes in the process. That resulted in an invalid URL at the backend server. The fix was simple, but extremely hard to find. Just remove the trailing slash from the proxy_pass directive, like below.

Invalid URI is sent to the backend server with this configuration of Nginx.

   1  proxy_pass         http://backend1:3000/;

Valid, untampered URI is sent with this configuration of Nginx.

   1  proxy_pass         http://backend1:3000;

This is my nginx LogFormat configuration:

   1  log_format main '$remote_addr - $remote_user [$time_local] $status '
   2                      '"$request" $body_bytes_sent "$http_referer" '
   3                      '"$http_user_agent" "http_x_forwarded_for"';

And this is my Awstats LogFormat configuration:

   1  LogFormat = "%host - %host_r %time1 %code %methodurl %bytesd %refererquot %uaquot %otherquot"

This is a draft…

Installing Vlad the Deployer

   1  gem install vlad

Configuring Vlad the Deployer

Add this to the end of RakeFile:

   1  begin
   2    require 'rubygems'
   3    require 'vlad'
   4    Vlad.load :scm => :git
   5  rescue LoadError => e
   6    puts "Unable to load Vlad #{e}."
   7  end

Note that we’re telling Vlad to use git. This snippet- gives you a quick introduction on how to use git with Rails.

Creating the deployment recipe

If you’re uncertain what these variables mean, have a look at the docs. This folder is also worth a look, and don’t forget to take a peek at the vlad source code.

   1  #
   2  # General configuration
   3  #
   4  set :ssh_flags,             '-p 666'
   5  set :application,           'xxx.com'
   6  set :domain,                '127.0.01'
   7  set :deploy_to,             '/var/www/xxx.com'
   8  set :repository,            '/var/lib/git/repositories/xxx.com/.git/'
   9  
  10  
  11  #
  12  # Mongrel configuration
  13  #
  14  set :mongrel_clean,         true
  15  set :mongrel_command,       'sudo mongrel_rails'
  16  set :mongrel_group,         'www-data'
  17  set :mongrel_port,          9000
  18  set :mongrel_servers,       3
  19  
  20  #set :mongrel_address,       '127.0.0.1'
  21  #set(:mongrel_conf)          { '#{shared_path}/mongrel_cluster.conf' }
  22  #set :mongrel_config_script, nil
  23  #set :mongrel_environment,   'production'
  24  #set :mongrel_log_file,      nil
  25  #set :mongrel_pid_file,      nil
  26  #set :mongrel_prefix,        nil
  27  #set :mongrel_user,          'mongrel'
  28  
  29  #
  30  # Customize Vlad to our needs
  31  #
  32  namespace :vlad do
  33    #
  34    # Add an after_update hook
  35    #
  36    remote_task :update do
  37      Rake::Task['vlad:after_update'].invoke
  38    end
  39  
  40    #
  41    # The after_update hook, which is run after vlad:update
  42    #
  43    remote_task :after_update do
  44    # Link to shared resources, if you have them in .gitignore
  45    #  run "ln -s #{deploy_to}/shared/system/database.yml #{deploy_to}/current/config/database.yml"
  46    end
  47  
  48    #
  49    # Deploys a new version of your application
  50    #
  51    remote_task :deploy => [:update, :migrate, :start_app]
  52  end

Setup the server

   1  $ rake vlad:setup

This will create the necessary folders and mongrel_cluster configuration file.

Deploy the application

Now deploy the application with vlad:deploy, which is a custom rake task that we added to the deployment recipe:

   1  $ rake vlad:deploy

Copying your SSH public key to the remote server

Vlad uses ssh for executing commands on the remotely, and rsync for copying the build to your server, which means you’ll quickly grow tired of typing your password each time a command is run.

This problem is solved by copying your public SSH keys to the remote server, this snippet- explains how to do exactly that.

   1  sudo vim /etc/init.d/nginx

Paste in the following (remember to run ‘set :paste’ in VIM when pasting):

   1  #! /bin/sh
   2  ##
   3  # nginx start script
   4  ##
   5  
   6  PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin
   7  DAEMON=/usr/local/sbin/nginx
   8  NAME=nginx
   9  DESC=nginx
  10  
  11  if [ ! -x $DAEMON ]
  12  then
  13     echo "Couldn't find $DAEMON. Please set path to DAEMON."
  14     exit 0
  15  fi
  16  
  17  
  18  # Include nginx defaults if available
  19  if [ -f /etc/default/nginx ] ; then
  20  	. /etc/default/nginx
  21  fi
  22  
  23  set -e
  24  
  25  case "$1" in
  26    start)
  27  	echo -n "Starting $DESC: "
  28  	start-stop-daemon --start --pidfile /var/run/$NAME.pid \
  29  		--exec $DAEMON -- $DAEMON_OPTS
  30  	echo "$NAME."
  31  	;;
  32    stop)
  33  	echo -n "Stopping $DESC: "
  34  	start-stop-daemon --stop --pidfile /var/run/$NAME.pid \
  35  		--exec $DAEMON
  36  	echo "$NAME."
  37  	;;
  38    restart|force-reload)
  39  	echo -n "Restarting $DESC: "
  40  	start-stop-daemon --stop --pidfile \
  41  		/var/run/$NAME.pid --exec $DAEMON
  42  	sleep 1
  43  	start-stop-daemon --start --pidfile \
  44  		/var/run/$NAME.pid --exec $DAEMON -- $DAEMON_OPTS
  45  	echo "$NAME."
  46  	;;
  47    reload)
  48        echo -n "Reloading $DESC configuration: "
  49        start-stop-daemon --stop --signal HUP --pidfile /var/run/$NAME.pid \
  50            --exec $DAEMON
  51        echo "$NAME."
  52        ;;
  53    *)
  54  	N=/etc/init.d/$NAME
  55  	echo "Usage: $N {start|stop|restart|force-reload}" >&2
  56  	exit 1
  57  	;;
  58  esac
  59  
  60  exit 0

Now make the script executable with this command:

   1  sudo chmod 755 /etc/init.d/nginx

Lastly, run this command to make the script run when the server starts and stops:

   1  sudo /usr/sbin/update-rc.d -f nginx defaults

DRAFT …

Find latest version of nginx

http://sysoev.ru/en/ http://wiki.codemongers.com/NginxInstallOptions

Install a compiler otherwise: ./configure: error: C compiler gcc is not found

The command:

   1  sudo apt-get install build-essential

Install pre-requisites otherwise you’ll get:

Configuration summary + threads are not used + PCRE library is not found + OpenSSL library is not found + md5 library is not used + sha1 library is not used + zlib library is not found

The command:

   1  sudo apt-get install libpcre3 libpcre3-dev libpcrecpp0 libssl-dev zlib1g-dev

Much better:

Configuration summary + threads are not used + using system PCRE library + using system OpenSSL library + md5 library is not used + sha1 library is not used + using system zlib library

Compile and install nginx

   1  $ ./configure \
   2          --sbin-path=/usr/local/sbin \
   3          --conf-path=/etc/nginx/nginx.conf \
   4          --pid-path=/var/run/nginx.pid \
   5          --error-log-path=/var/log/nginx/error.log \
   6          --http-log-path=/var/log/nginx/access.log \
   7          --with-http_ssl_module \
   8          --http-client-body-temp-path=/tmp/nginx_client \
   9          --http-proxy-temp-path=/tmp/nginx_proxy \
  10          --http-fastcgi-temp-path=/tmp/nginx_fastcgi
  11  $ make
  12  $ sudo make install

Run the install script

   1  cd /usr/local/src
   2  
   3  wget http://sysoev.ru/nginx/nginx-0.5.35.tar.gz
   4  
   5  tar zxvf nginx-0.5.35
   6  
   7  cd nginx-0.5.35

Create an nginx user and group

   1  $ useradd -g www-data -d /var/www nginx

Create the web server directory

   1  mkdir /var/www
   2  chown root.www-data /var/www
   3  chmod ug=rwx,o= /var/www

Test configuration

   1  nginx -t
   2  2008/03/09 20:51:05 [info] 5034#0: the configuration file /etc/nginx/nginx.conf syntax is ok
   3  2008/03/09 20:51:05 [info] 5034#0: the configuration file /etc/nginx/nginx.conf was tested successfully

Start nginx

   1  nginx