Capistrano Recipes

Useful Capistrano recipes including:

Create MySQL database and user on server (via prompts)
Create standalone copy of database.yml in shared path (via prompts)
Log rotation and tailing commands
Restart and profile Phusion Passenger application server
Configure, start/stop/restart Unicorn application server
Send commands to God or Bluepill monitoring tools
Send commands to Thinking Sphinx

Included Tasks

cap db:create_yaml
cap db:mysql:setup
cap db:mysql:dump
cap db:mysql:fetch_dump
cap db:mysql:restore
cap log:rotate
cap log:tail
cap passenger:bounce
cap passenger:memory
cap passenger:status
cap nginx:setup
cap nginx:start
cap nginx:stop
cap nginx:restart
cap nginx:status
cap unicorn:start
cap unicorn:stop
cap unicorn:restart
cap unicorn:setup
cap symlinks:make
cap god:setup
cap god:implode
cap god:restart
cap god:reload
cap god:status
cap god:terminate
cap god:start
cap god:stop
cap god:quit
cap bluepill:install
cap bluepill:init
cap bluepill:start
cap bluepill:restart
cap bluepill:stop
cap bluepill:status
cap sphinx:config
cap sphinx:start
cap sphinx:stop
cap sphinx:rebuild
cap sphinx:index
cap sphinx:symlinks

Installation

Easy as pie…

Ensure you have the Capistrano gem installed:

sudo gem install capistrano

Optionally install the Capistrano extensions gem to give you multistage support:

sudo gem install capistrano-ext

Install this gem:

sudo gem install capistrano-recipes --source=http://gemcutter.com

To setup the initial Capistrano deploy file, go to your Rails app folder via command line and enter:

capify .

Configuration

Inside the newly created config/deploy.rb, add:

require 'capistrano/ext/multistage' # only require if you've installed Cap ext gem

# This one should go at the end of your deploy.rb
require 'capistrano_recipes'

RVM

RVM is enabled by default. You can disable it by setting :using_rvm to false, or leverage it by setting your rvm_ruby_string to appropriate ones (default is ree)

If using_rvm is true, the rvm recipe will load rvm’s own capistrano extensions so you don’t have to worry about it during deploy. Just make sure you have everything set up right, like .rvmrc on project root and system-wide install on the servers.

See (rvm.beginrescueend.com/rvm/install) for more info.

Nginx

If you’re using nginx as your web server, set :web_server to :nginx and deploy:setup will generate the appropriate configuration file for it based on your other variables, such as :application_uses_ssl, etc.

Passenger

If you’re running Phusion Passenger (www.modrails.com) be sure you add this line to config/deploy.rb:

set :server, :passenger

Unicorn

If you’re running Unicorn (unicorn.bogomips.org/) be sure to add this line instead:

set :server, :unicorn