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Thanks to mongrel, Ruby on Rails deployment is finally decent. Several weeks back I switched all of our servers over to using Apache 2.2 with mod_proxy_balancer, mongrel and mongrel_cluster, and I haven’t had any problems.

Unfortunately, since most of our servers run CentOS (repackaged RedHat Enterprise Server 4), the setup isn’t as easy as it could be since it ships with Apache 2.0 and ruby 1.8.2, which doesn’t work with Rails. So I’ve rebuilt all the necessary RPMs (and more) and made them available to make deploying a snap. Note: these packages should also work on RedHat Enterprise Linux 4, however, I have not tested them.

Yum configuration

Download or create the yum config in /etc/yum.repos.d/ file with the following contents:

[ci]
name=[i] Collective Idea RPM Repository
baseurl=http://source.collectiveidea.com/pub/linux/centos/4/i386
gpgcheck=1
enabled=1
gpgkey=http://source.collectiveidea.com/pub//RPM-GPG-KEY

Install Packages

To install the packages, run:

yum install httpd ruby ruby-devel rubygems ri

Note: If you already have Apache and other modules installed, this command may fail. You can try running yum upgrade, or you may just need to remove the packages before you install the new packages. If you’re using any packages, such as other Apache modules, that I haven’t rebuilt against Apache 2.2, let me know and I can add them.

Install Gems

Install the gems you need by running:

gem install -y rails mongrel mongrel_cluster

Configure Apache and Mongrel

Lastly, follow one of the guides for configuring Apache and mongrel.

Let me know if you have any problems with these packages.

Every year anxious forcasters predict that “this will be the year for Linux on the desktop”. While I am always hopeful that they are right, I have never quite understood what they mean. Do they mean that this will be the year that vendors will ship Linux on their desktop systems (Dell and HP, among others, already do)? Or maybe they mean that this will be the year that Linux gains the majority of the market share on the desktop? (Keep dreaming.) What are the metrics to determine if this is the year for Linux on the desktop?

Whatever they mean, I do know that Linux on the desktop has made huge improvements over the past couple years. As Scott Morris points out in a recent NewsForge article about Novell’s survey of most-wanted list of Linux applications, Linux users are satisfied with the basic desktop applications that the majority of people use, like word processing and email. For the most part, the applications that are lacking are not “desktop” applications, but professional applications.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, but the NewsForge article prompted me to finally write about it. Over the next several months, I’m going to try and post regularly about exciting things going on with Linux on the desktop. I primarily use Fedora (currently running FC5test3), but I anticipate that most of what I write should apply to any recent distribution.

update: Shortly after posting this, I bought a MacBook Pro, so this series is on hold for a little bit.

From the moment I first heard about the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet, I wanted one. I don’t remember the last time I was this excited about a gadget. Well, at Christmas I was fortunate enough to get one (thank you mom and wife!).

My experience with it so far has been very positive! My main reason for wanting it is that I read a lot of material online and in PDFs. I have a subscription to Safari, and anytime it’s an option, I buy the PDF version of a book instead of the hard copy. For that, it has been great. I can sit on the couch or lay in bed and read to my heart’s content.

My only real complaint is in line with some of the typical criticisms of it: it’s slow. Some people complain that it’s not worth $350.00 to check your email and read news. First of all, it’s extremely simple to install applications, so you can do a lot more with it than check email and read news (important things, like play games). And second, by saving $20 every time I buy an ebook instead of a hard copy, and taking better advantage of Safari, it will have been worth it in 6 months.

So it’s been a good experience. I haven’t done any hacking on it yet, but sometime soon I hope to find time to install the updates and enable root access.

I’ve been running Linux for a little over 3 years now. For the most part, it has been a very pleasant journey. Frustrating at times, but overall, pleasant.

I recently passed a major landmark: For the first time, in 3 years, I can do everything with my laptop in Linux that I was able to do with Windows! One of my biggest frustations as a mobile Linux user was the inability to suspend and resume. I’ve been reading about success stories from the hard-core Linux hackers for a while, but I’ve never actually been able to get it to work. In the past, I’ve gotten it to hibernate and resume in text mode, but X always seemed to cause problems. But, thanks to a little script called hibernate (not the Java ORM), and a wonderful guy named Matthias Hensler who created RPMs and some nice instructions, my laptop is happily hibernating and resuming, all with a pretty little splash image.