First download mysql-python from http://sourceforge.net/projects/mysql-python.

Extract it and run:

   1  python setup.py build
   2  sudo python setup.py install

If you get this error you need to install python-dev package:

   1  In file included from _mysql.c:29:
   2  pymemcompat.h:10:20: error: Python.h: No such file or directory
   3  _mysql.c:30:26: error: structmember.h: No such file or directory
   4  In file included from /usr/include/mysql/mysql.h:44,
   5                   from _mysql.c:40:
   6  .
   7  .
   8  .
   9  _mysql.c:2808: warning: return type defaults to 'int'
  10  _mysql.c: In function 'DL_EXPORT':
  11  _mysql.c:2808: error: expected declaration specifiers before 'init_mysql'
  12  _mysql.c:2886: error: expected '{' at end of input
  13  error: command 'gcc' failed with exit status 1

Installing the python-dev package on Debian is done with apt-get or synaptic:

   1  apt-get install python-dev

Installing the library should now work:

   1  python setup.py build
   2  python setup.py install

Next test the library in the python console:

   1  import MySQLdb
   2  
   3  # Note that this example uses UTF-8 encoding
   4  conn = MySQLdb.connect(host='localhost', user='...', passwd='...', db='...', charset = "utf8", use_unicode = True)
   5  cursor = conn.cursor()
   6  
   7  
   8  cursor.execute ("SELECT * FROM cities")
   9  rows = cursor.fetchall ()
  10  
  11  for row in rows:
  12    print "%s, %s" % (row[0], row[1].encode('utf-8'))
  13  
  14  print "Number of rows returned: %d" % cursor.rowcount
  15  

Don’t forget to close the cursor and connection, and if you’re inserting data commit before closing, because autocommit is disabled by default:

   1  cursor.close ()
   2  conn.commit ()
   3  conn.close ()

For more information about MySQLdb see this article.

Inspiration for this snippet was taken from this post on the Sphinx forum, plus this blog post.

Compiling Sphinx

First install the prerequisites:

   1  sudo aptitude install libmysql++-dev libmysqlclient15-dev checkinstall

Next download sphinx, libstemmer and install everything and the fish:

   1  cd /usr/local/src
   2  
   3  wget http://sphinxsearch.com/downloads/sphinx-0.9.8-rc2.tar.gz
   4  tar zxvf sphinx-0.9.8-rc2.tar.gz 
   5  
   6  cd sphinx-0.9.8-rc2/
   7  
   8  # Add stemming support for Swedish, Finnish and other fun languages.
   9  wget http://snowball.tartarus.org/dist/libstemmer_c.tgz
  10  tar zxvf libstemmer_c.tgz
  11  
  12  ./configure --with-libstemmer
  13  make
  14  
  15  make install

Configure Sphinx

Create a sphinx.conf file in your Rails config directory, as described here, or use this template.

Install acts_as_sphinx plugin

   1  ./script/plugin install http://svn.datanoise.com/acts_as_sphinx

Add acts_as_sphinx to your model:

   1  class Documents
   2     acts_as_sphinx
   3  end

Indexing content

   1  rake sphinx:index
   2  
   3  (in /var/www/xxx.com/releases/20080429144230)
   4  Sphinx 0.9.8-rc2 (r1234)
   5  Copyright (c) 2001-2008, Andrew Aksyonoff
   6  
   7  using config file './sphinx.conf'...
   8  indexing index 'xxx.com'...
   9  collected 5077 docs, 0.6 MB
  10  sorted 0.1 Mhits, 100.0% done
  11  total 5077 docs, 632096 bytes
  12  total 0.160 sec, 3950427.25 bytes/sec, 31729.86 docs/sec

Reindexing content

sphinx:index shouldn’t be run while the searchd process is running, so use rake sphinx:rotate instead, which restarts the searchd process after indexing.

Starting the daemon

   1  mkdir -m 664 /var/log/sphinx
   2  rake sphinx:start
   3  
   4  (in /var/www/xxx.com/releases/20080429144230)
   5  Sphinx 0.9.8-rc2 (r1234)
   6  Copyright (c) 2001-2008, Andrew Aksyonoff
   7  
   8  using config file './sphinx.conf'...
   9  Sphinx searchd server started.

Searching

   1  Documents.find_with_sphinx 'why did I write this'

The stemmer4r gem is fubar. Warning draft snippet…

   1  # gem install stemmer4r
   2  Bulk updating Gem source index for: http://gems.rubyforge.org
   3  Building native extensions.  This could take a while...
   4  ERROR:  While executing gem ... (Gem::Installer::ExtensionBuildError)
   5      ERROR: Failed to build gem native extension.
   6  
   7  ruby extconf.rb install stemmer4r
   8  
   9  Gem files will remain installed in /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/stemmer4r-0.6 for inspection.
  10  Results logged to /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/stemmer4r-0.6/ext/stemmer4r/gem_make.out
  11  
  12  
  13  1. Change path of Ruby executable
  14  
  15  cd /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/stemmer4r-0.6/ext/stemmer4r/
  16  vim extconf.rb
  17  
  18  #!/usr/bin/ruby -w
  19  
  20  to
  21  
  22  #ruby -w
  23  
  24  2. Compile libstemmer_c
  25  
  26  cd /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/stemmer4r-0.6/ext/stemmer4r/libstemmer/
  27  make
  28  
  29  3. Compile stemmer4r
  30  
  31  cd /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/stemmer4r-0.6/ext/stemmer4r/
  32  
  33  Change path:
  34  /usr/local/ruby/lib/ruby/1.8/i686-linux/
  35  To:
  36  /usr/lib/ruby/1.8/x86_64-linux/
  37  
  38  Or wherever you have it installed
  39  
  40  ruby extconf.rb
  41  
  42  
  43  4. Build stemmer4r gem
  44  
  45  
  46  gem build stemmer4r.gemspec
  47  
  48  gem install stemmer4r-0.6.gem
  49  
  50  
  51  Problems
  52  
  53  gcc -shared -rdynamic -Wl,-export-dynamic   -L"/usr/lib" -o stemmer4r.so stemmer4r.o libstemmer_c/libstemmer.o  -lruby1.8  -lpthread -ldl -lcrypt -lm   -lc
  54  /usr/bin/ld: libstemmer_c/libstemmer.o(libstemmer.o): relocation R_X86_64_32 against `a local symbol' can not be used when making a shared object; recompile with -fPIC
  55  libstemmer_c/libstemmer.o: could not read symbols: Bad value
  56  collect2: ld returned 1 exit status
  57  make: *** [stemmer4r.so] Error 1
  58  
  59  
  60  Add CFLAGS:
  61  
  62  root@aktagon:/usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/stemmer4r-0.6/ext/stemmer4r/libstemmer_c# make
  63  include mkinc.mak
  64  CFLAGS   =  -fPIC
  65  libstemmer.o: $(snowball_sources:.c=.o)
  66          $(AR) -cru $@ $^
  67  

DRAFT …

Install RubyGems

   1  http://rubyforge.org/frs/download.php/29548/rubygems-1.0.1.tgz
   2  
   3  tar zxvf rubygems-1.0.1.tgz
   4  
   5  cd rubygems-1.0.1
   6  
   7  ruby setup.rb

Install Rails

   1  gem install rails

Install sqlite3 (optional)

   1  apt-get install sqlite3 libsqlite3-dev
   2  gem install sqlite3-ruby

Install mongrel and mongrel_cluster

   1  $ gem install mongrel mongrel_cluster
   2  
   3  $ mongrel_rails cluster::configure -e production \
   4    -p 8000 \
   5    -a 127.0.0.1 \
   6    -N 3 \
   7    -c /var/www/xyz/current
   8  
   9  
  10  $ mongrel_rails cluster::start
  11  
  12  
  13  $ useradd -g www-data -d /var/www mongrel

Surviving reboots

   1  sudo mkdir /etc/mongrel_cluster
   2  
   3  sudo ln -s /var/www/xyz/config/mongrel_cluster.yml /etc/mongrel_cluster/xyz.yml
   4  
   5  sudo cp /usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/mongrel_cluster-1.0.5/resources/mongrel_cluster /etc/init.d/
   6  
   7  sudo chmod +x /etc/init.d/mongrel_cluster
   8  
   9  sudo /usr/sbin/update-rc.d -f mongrel_cluster defaults
  10  
  11  mongrel_cluster_ctl status

Stale pids

If your mongrels crash or if you kill them, mongrel_cluster won’t start your mongrels because mongrel_cluster believes the processes are still running, instead mongrel_cluster complains and does nothing:

   1  ** !!! PID file tmp/pids/mongrel.8000.pid already exists.  Mongrel could be running already.  Check your log/mongrel.8000.log for errors.
   2  ** !!! Exiting with error.  You must stop mongrel and clear the .pid before I'll attempt a start.

To fix this simply add the —clean switch to the /usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/mongrel_cluster-1.0.5/resources/mongrel_cluster startup script:

   1  mongrel_cluster_ctl start -c $CONF_DIR --clean

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