Motivation

So, after numerous issues with Mongrel and Mongrel Cluster, as reported in our last Rails-related post, and after following all the buzz, we decided to give Phusion Passenger a try – we were not disappointed!

Don’t get us wrong, we still prefer Mongrel as our development server, and there are instances where Mongrel Cluster makes lots of sense (load balancing, for example), but we wanted to explore the reputed simplicity of Passenger -

..And we wanted to multiplex multiple websites onto one Apache instance, simply and easily!

Simplicity

So, we followed the gem-basedinstallation  instructions here: http://www.modrails.com/install.html

After installation with Gem, the nicely-written text mode installer guided us through the install process for the ‘dev’ packages, and then compiled itself from source – Very nice! A polished touch!

Done!

So after one global include in /etc/apache2/conf.d/passenger:

LoadModule passenger_module /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/passenger-2.2.4/ext/apache2/mod_passenger.so
PassengerRoot /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/passenger-2.2.4
PassengerRuby /usr/bin/ruby1.8

We were able to use multiple files in ‘sites-available’ of the format:

<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerName www.yourhost.com
    DocumentRoot /somewhere/public
    #                       ^-- be sure to point to 'public' within your rails app!
</VirtualHost>

To easily achieve multiple rails apps, with disparate domains, served by the single instance, reasonably painlessly – Note that you do have to have the domains point to the correct IP address, of course

The Verdict

Our verdict: All in all pretty painless and professional – and the benchmarks seem to support great performance -

So, if you want us to install Passenger for you, just indicate this in the “Notes” field when you place your order, and we’ll get it done for you.

We will likely soon make it the default, if no objections are heard from you, our customers, in the near future.

Notes

Please note that we can do this on top of either Turnkey rails, or our regular Rails instance.

Rails 2.3.3 now available

Please note that Rails 2.3.3 is also now available from the dropdowns when you place your order!

Nginx

Note also that Phusion Passenger also offers an Nginx version – we will be happy to install the highly acclaimed Nginx web server, along with the corresponding version of Phusion Passenger, via custom quote – Please contact us today regarding getting this set up for you!

j

Ruby on Rails 2.3.2

We are pleased to announce the availability of the Ruby on Rails 2.3 stack (currently 2.3.2, as of this writing).

We have opted to try out the excellent (Ubuntu-based) Turnkey Linux software appliance for Rails 2.3, rather than using our own installation and provisioning scripts, and so far we have had excellent results.

(We have also had good results with the Turnkey Drupal appliance as well).

Things we liked about the Turnkey appliance:

• Preconfigured SSL / SSH support – all keys & certs  generated during installation, set up w/Apache
• Security-related updates applied daily
• Webmin preinstalled and precofigured for Apache, MySql, etc
• RubyGems package manager installed the way we recommend – with Ruby managed by apt, but Gems installed from source.
• Just as we say: “Use gem for managing Rails gems, and apt for everything else.”

Things we had trouble with or had to fix:

• The 3-node mongrel cluster was cumbersome to administer, and difficult to modify for new rails apps from the “Example” rails app preinstalled by Turnkey.  Either No example app, or a more flexible way to add new apps would have been better.
• No option for, or mention of Phusion Passenger.
• SQLite and git were not installed
• Our regular VMs do a reconfigure tzdata on first startup, so you don’t forget to set your timsezone correctly

Additional notes and packages we installed:

• mc – Midnight Commander – tried-n-true text mode dual-pane file manager
• file – Without this, obscure dependencies remain unmet for builds, etc
• sqlite3, libsqlite3-ruby - should be installed, even if MySql is the default db (Postgres might be nice too)
• git-core should be installed, given the percentage if Rails plugins that use it, plus gems can install from git, but only if it’s installed!
• lynx, other viewers for mc – important for reading docs in console

/etc/init.d/mongrel_cluster stop

didn’t work, and had to manually stop the clusters on ports 8000, 8001, & 8002

Had to manually do things like:

mkdir -p tmp/pids

and

chown -R www-data:www-data *

on certain directories, etc, to make certain core components work, that shouldn’t have been necessary.

Anyway, these considerations are relatively minor, and are all addressed now, and working well – just select “Rails 2.3″  from the dropdown when you place your order -

Plus, look for a future update where we integrate Phusion Passeneger with your VM – Let us know what you prefer, please enter which deployment option you prefer for Rails in the comments on this post, and why -

• Mongrel, Mongrel cluster
• Phusion Passenger/mod_rails
• mod_wsgi
• Apache
• nginx
• Lighttpd
• etc

…and we’ll listen!

j

Get Sugared

We are pleased to announce the latest SugarCRM is now available for hosting in your own private vMachine (VPS), or we can manage it for you (managed services), here at LibreHosting.

As such, you can of course have an unlimited number of users, with no per-user fees.

It looks good!

Here is a screenshot of the front page, with various dashboard-style widgets (Sugar calls them “Dashlets” that you can drag around, position how you want, and add and remove – Nice!

The theme shown is “Shred”, which is one of 20+ themes, which are quite nicely done – try it out on our SugarCRM Sandbox!

Remember, if you’re an Open Source project owner, and you’d like to have live demo (aka sandbox) services for your project, we can provide them – and it’s free for Open Source!

More Themes

Other SugarCRM themes, shown below, are “Final Frontier” (Astronomy theme), “Links” (a Golf theme), and my favorite, “Golden Gate (foggy SF theme .

Final Frontier

Links

Golden Gate

Usability, Overall Impression

Sugar makes a distinction between “Employees” and “Users”, which can be disconcerting at first, until you get used to it – it’s done so that Employees don’t have to have a Sugar login; but in practice it makes adding new users a lot more clicky then it otherwise would need to be..

Overall, though, it’s extremely polished and professional – and at least as capable as the Siebel implementations I’ve seen in the early 2000′s..

More comments as we use it further.

j

We are pleased to announce that WordPress 2.7.1 as well as WordPress_mu are now available for hosting, to the general public.

Although we have hosted dozens of WP blogs for various clients and customers in the past, this is the first time that accelerated deployment on a custom and individual basis is available through our builds system.

We can host:

1. An individual root-access vMachine for you with WPMU and unlimited* blogs and subdomains, which will have a single unified Admin interface (and database) for all blogs.
2. An individual root-access vMachine for you with the latest WordPress and Debian’s one-copy-multiple-instances configuration, with easy admin for all your blogs, and individual admin interfaces (and databases) for each Blog. Again, blogs are unlimited*
3. A shared-hosting WordPress blog, on our main WP vMachine, always maintained to the latest WP version.

The first two options are available under our regular vMachine root-access hosting plans, and the third is $100/year with one domain name included. Contact us today for more information.

All our WP instances come with:

• Your choice of 110+ themes (and counting)
• Fulll comment-spam protection with Akismet
• Many useful plugins, including:
• For Photoblogging: YAPB (Yet Another PhotoBlog)
• For Videos: the FlowPlayer plugin to integrate the FlowPlayer on your blog, integrated with a media server for your videos

We also have used and installed various other plugins on request, including WP-Forum, WP-Polls, and WP-eCommerce. (We also wrote the TrustCommerce payment gateway for WP-eCommerce in PHP).

As always, if you’d like a theme or plugin installed with your order, just place the name and link to it in the “notes” field when you place your order, and we’ll get it done for you.

j

*The number of blogs is unlimited, just be mindful of your bandwidth allocation chosen with your plan

Ubuntu Jaunty Jackalope is now available for ordering through our eCommerce engine.

UPDATED: Released version now installed.
And it looks great!

Note that as is our usual policy, we had been installing the beta / RC for a couple of weeks prior to the formal launch / release – this is our usual policy.

And remember you can always ask for an earlier beta or alpha to install on request, as well.

Next up for our techs: Rails 2.3!

…We jumped the gun – The prerelease of Ubuntu 9.04 is now available for installation –

We’ll set it up for you with the beta, now, and simply upgrade it when it’s released -

j

Libre hosters,

We are proud to announce that the Django-based social-network-enabling Pinax project, is now one of our standard instances, and can be hosted here at Libre hosting, with the usual full root access.

Pinax version (as of this writing), is v0.7.0dev, and is installed with svn to be updatable with svn up, as always (and as our Django instances are, by default). Other versions available on request.

All plugins are preinstalled, and enabled, along with the usual list of example Pinax projects:

drwxr-xr-x  7 root root 4096 2009-03-29 05:18 basic_project
drwxr-xr-x 10 root root 4096 2009-03-30 15:38 complete_project
drwxr-xr-x  7 root root 4096 2009-03-29 05:18 intranet_project
drwxr-xr-x  7 root root 4096 2009-03-29 05:18 private_beta_project
drwxr-xr-x  7 root root 4096 2009-03-29 05:18 temp_content_project
drwxr-xr-x  7 root root 4096 2009-03-29 05:18 temp_group_project
drwxr-xr-x  8 root root 4096 2009-03-29 05:18 temp_schedule_project

Apache with mod_python is the default webserver installed, but we will be happy to install Lighttpd on request (or nginx by prearrangement – contact us for details) with mod_wsgi instead.

Our default Pinax installation includes Django svn trunk (~1.1 as of this writing) with all plugins preinstalled by the Pinax installation scripts. We do not install into a Python virtualenv, because this is intended to be a dedicated Pinax / Django installation.  We can make changes accordingly as desired, upon your request.

Pinax really turbocharges the Django framework, and includes (at least) these pluggables:

• django-email-confirmation
• django-timezones
• django-threadedcomments
• django-ajax-validation
• django-flags
• django-pagination
• django-oembed
• django-notification
• django-mailer
• django-dbtemplates
• django-robots
• django-announcements

Here are a few example Pinax sites to show a portion of what it can do:

• foodsel
• Trailmapping
• tuttivisti

Let us know what you think,
j

The Announcement

We are happy to announce that the Zimbra Collaboration Suite v5.0.12 OSE (Open Source Edition) is now available for hosting.

Our qualified & certified vMachine is built with Ubuntu 8.04 LTS (Long Term Support), and this is the configuration we recommend. We can also build it with other available, Zimbra-supported OSes, contact us for your individual needs.

It Looks Good

Zimbra has really matured in this version  – in addition to a polished, good-looking, intuitive interface, it features:

• Fully ajax webmail, snappy key responses
• Full IMAP and POP3 support, forwarding, aliases, vacation messages, client-style filtering & foldering, etc
• Excellent Spam filtering in this version (Much improved over previous versions)
• Full Outlook-style calendaring and notes / integrated PIM capability
• Integrated web-based documents – like GoogleDocs, but you control privacy / permisions (and no ads!)
• “Briefcase”-style file reconciliation and repository
• Zimlet extension framework, Optional Zimbra Desktop
• Fully themable – The “Lemongrass” theme is pictured here:

Zimbra 5.0.12 Screenshot

How We Did It

There were several Zimbra prerequisistes, in addition to our basic suite of vMachine standard packages, here is our basic Zimbra install:

# dont forget to set the locale and the timezome before doing apt-get
apt-get update
apt-get install perl libidn11 fetchmail libpcre3 libgmp3c2 libexpat1 libxml2 libstdc++5 openssl libltdl3 libmagic1 cron file

# zcs 5.012 ubu 804 lts 32-bit, extracted directly:
wget -O – http://h.yimg.com/lo/downloads/5.0.12_GA/zcs-5.0.12_GA_2789.UBUNTU8.20090126112326.tgz | tar zx

Then CD  into the directory and run the installer.

Note that some of the required programs and dependencies were not listed, and after a couple of false starts, we found some help here:

http://www.zimbra.com/forums/installation/8626-server-status-data-not-available.html

So we overcame these and other minor issues, and now:

It’s Certified, Getting Formal

We have Certified the combination as

• Fully bootable on a wide variety of VM and hardware platforms
• Expandable via added HDs
• VM-friendly, including JeOS modules and virtio
• Remote-Desktop / xrdp / VNC-friendly
• Web-Administrable
• Puppet-ready
• Self-signed certificate
• Script-deploy rating: 7 out of 10

Note that in the future, we are considering what categories we should use as categories for a formal Libre Certification program.  We welcome your thoughts and comments, please post them as comments to this post.

Example ideas:

• Bootable system-image DVD Backups available?
• Administrable via various vm-admin tools, OpenQRM? VirtualMin, etc?
• Usage / Bandwidth stats, RRDTool?
• NX/NoMachine-ready? Citrix?

We will be launching the “Libre-Certified” program as we finalize these and other details.  The program will also be available to 3rd parties (Both system and hosting providers), and add value to the community, and to FLOSS “Best-practices” configurations.

All Versions Available

This featured vMachine in this announcement is the Zimbra ZCS OSE (Open Source Edition) – because we believe in FLOSSing regularly (FLOSS: Free/Libre Open Source Software, although proper  dental maintenance practices are also of course important!).

For those who require the features found in the ZCS paid/Network Editions, (Exchange-interoperability, etc), we are an authorized Zimbra partner, and we are happy to host the Zimbra paid versions as well.

Contact us for details and how to get started.

We are pleased to announce that we now have three Django versions available for hosting in any of our plans -

• Django 1.1 trunk – the prerelease, currently targeted for March 2009.
• Django 1.02 – the current “stable” release
• Django 0.96.3 – the legacy “Pre-1.0″ release, which is still supported

Notes:

1. Although 1.1 is not yet officially released, trunk is always pretty stable – as projects go, the Django team can be relied upon to keep the trunk tree extremely reliable – we run trunk in production, for example.  For new projects, we recommend this option.
2. Legacy 0.96.3 is the last release before the 1.0 release which broke backward compatibility – it includes the older admin interface (with nested Admin classes), and the older Signals implementation – which provide a migration hurdle for many production environments – we have several customers and friends still running 0.96.3 until they address these migration issues.  We can also help with this, if you need us.
3. The official released version, 1.02, is stable, and well-tested.  We recommend this option for those conservative production environments that have full-blown separated test/staging and developent envoironments as well.

As always, if you need a specific legacy version (or a specific trunk svn release for that matter, or release-by-date) we will be happy to install it from svn on request, just plce your request in the “notes” field when you place your order.

We will also happily install any Django packages you desire, as well, on request – try the lists at Django Pluggables and Django Search. Google Code also has a good number of Django-related projects hosted there.

And remember, if you need design, development, or site setup assistance, we are always here to help.

j

Ubuntu 8.10, Intrepid Ibex, just released, is now our recommended OS platform.

It’s available from the OS dropdown when you configure your vMachine instance while adding to cart.

As always, any additional notes or custom configuration requests should be placed in the “Notes” field when you place your order, as well.

We are also working new Rails instances, with lots of new plugins (ActiveMerchant) available preinstalled, as well as vMachines for both Django 1.01 as well as 1.1 instances.

We currently have Adempiere 3.52+ available, as well, running on Postgres 8.3 – we are preparing the list of installed packages for a future blog post!

j

Ademipere 3.52 (and 3.51, FWIW) are now available.

They are running on either Ubuntu Hardy 8.04 LTS, or Ubuntu Intrepid 8.10, your choice.

Both are running on PostgreSQL 8.3 and the latest PLJava.

All our VMs have RDP access (via xrdp) built in on request, and the usual KVM VNC, and SSH access as well.

The ZK Web UI on 3.52 is a big step forward from 3.51, and is pretty impressive!

We can also help you integrate your Adempiere backend with other SAAS  Services (aka ESB / Enterpise Service Bus),such as Jitterbit integration / glue software http://www.jitterbit.com/Product/screenshots.php, also see here:http://jeff-davis.blogspot.com/2007/05/jitterbit-screencast-demonstration.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enterprise_service_bus

Also, a great find: daily Adempiere binaries and WebStore demo – (it’s .jsp, though :-/ ):

http://testadempiere.com/
Test ADempiere Web Components

http://testadempiere.com/webui/

And Workspace by Smilehouse – Finnish Adempiere => eCommerce bridge / transformation using OpenSyncro

http://workspace.smilehouse.com/overview.shtml

WS Open Interface API

http://www.opensyncro.com

As always, we can help you integrate / launch / evaluate these technologies, and plan your rollout strategy for them and Adempiere.

We can also just help you get started.

j