deprec - Deployment Recipes for Capistrano

Introduction

The deprec [1] gem is a set of tasks for Capistrano [2]. These tasks provide for the installation, configuration and control of system services on servers running Ubuntu linux. Deprec was created in 2006 by Mike Bailey to setup an environment for running Ruby on Rails web applications on Ubuntu servers. Since then its uses have grown to installing Xen virtualization, mail, monitoring, high availability IP failover and other services.

The tasks are run at the command line on your workstation and connect to remote servers via ssh to run commands and copy out files.

Deprec-2.x is a complete rewrite of the project that achieves the following:

  • support for Capistrano 2

  • generated config files are stored locally to enable editing and version control

  • support for more services (heartbeat, nagios, nginx, ntp, postfix, etc)

  • multiple Rails deployment options (Passenger+Apache, Mongrel+Apache/Nginx)

  • creation of a standard base set of task names

  • tasks are cleanly separated into namespaced units (one file per service)

  • interactive prompting for missing config values

Deprec and Capistrano are written in the Ruby programming language [3] however no knowledge of Ruby is required to use it. Users should be able to write new tasks and modify existing options without prior knowledge of Ruby.

Installation

Deprec can be obtained from rubyforge and installed using rubygems.

sudo gem install deprec # installs deprec and dependancies cap depify . # creates ~/.caprc which you may edit cap -T # should list lots of deprec tasks

The .caprc file is loaded every time you use Capistrano. It in turn loads the deprec tasks so you always have them available. Editing the .caprc file in your home directory allows you to specify the location of your ssh key and enable some other useful options (documented in the comments). You can also put tasks here that you want access to, regardless of the current working directory.

Getting a Ruby on Rails app running on a fresh Ubuntu server

This is still what brings people to deprec. You can install a full Rails stack and get multiple apps running on it in much less time than it would take to do it manually (e.g. an hour vs. a weekend).

Get your app running on a fresh Ubuntu (7.10, 8.04) server with these commands:

cd your_rails_app
depify . 
# Edit config/deploy.rb
cap deprec:rails:install_stack

# WARNING! Don’t run the following command if you are using a shared # database server that has already been installed. cap deprec:db:install 

cap deploy:setup 
cap deploy 
cap deploy:migrate

Recorded times for complete install on Ubuntu hardy server (7.10 amd64)

* Passenger+REE+Apache : 14m29s * Passenger+ruby-1.8.7+Apache : 17m51s * nginx+mongrel : 16m25s Note you can choose combinations of: * Ruby Enterprise Edition or ruby-1.8.7 * Passenger or mongrel (passenger requires you choose to the apache option) * Apache or nginx

You can find documentation on the deprec site. www.deprec.org/

Installing other things

I plan to document other things I use deprec for on www.deprec.org/. Feel free to poke around and see what’s there. I use deprec to provision and manage servers so you might find some things in there I haven’t documented. Lucky you.

Disclaimer

The tasks run commands that may make changes to your workstation and remote server. You are advised to read the source and use at your own risk.

Credits

Deprec is written and maintained by Mike Bailey <[email protected]>. More about me here: [mike.bailey.net.au/]

Deprec was inspired and uses the brilliantly executed Capistrano. Thanks Jamis! This gem includes a modified copy of Neil Wilson’s very useful vmbuilder_plugins gem.

Thanks

Deprec wouldn’t be what it is without the contributions of many people, a few of whom are listed here:

Square Circle Triangle: commissioned work that has included in the project.
Eric Harris-Braun: great testing, bug reports and suggestions
Gus Gollings: helped restore www.deprec.org
Craig Ambrose: testing, documentation and beer

github forks of note:
  isaac
  paulreimer
  jasherai
  saimonmoore
  zippy

License

Deprec is licenced under the GPL. This means that you can use it in commercial or open source applications. More details found here: www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html

deprec - deployment recipes for capistrano Copyright © 2006-2008 Mike Bailey

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301, USA.

1

www.deprec.org/

2

www.capify.org/

3

www.ruby-lang.org/en/

4

rubyforge.org/

5

rubygems.org/

6

www.sct.com.au/

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