Introduction


WebROaR is an application server that makes deployments of ruby web applications extremely simple. It provides an integrated solution to view the run time performance numbers and email notifications in case any exceptions occur in any of the deployed applications.

It is 5 to 55% faster than all other comparable deployment stacks for Ruby on Rails applications.

Check out webroar.in and doc/user-guide.html for more details.

Key Features ~~~~~~~~~~~~

  • Maximum Performance.

  • Simplified Deployment.

  • Runs Ruby on Rails(TM) as well as other Rack compliant applications.

  • Run Multiple Applications Simultaneously.

  • Implements HTTP/1.1 grammar as per RFC 2616 including support for persistent,

and chunked requests.
  • Intelligent load balancing and dynamic reaping of stuck ruby processing

instances.
  • Provides run time performance data for the deployed applications.

  • Generates notifications in case any exceptions occur in any of the deployed

applications.
  • Zero Downtime Application Upgrades.

  • Static assets encoding.

  • SSL support.

Supported Operating Systems


WebROaR has been tested on Ubuntu 8.10/9.04/9.10/10.04, Debian 5 (64 Bit), Mac OS X (v10.5 & v10.6), Arch Linux 2009.08 and Cent OS 5.2. Basically, it should be able to run on any *IX OS.

Currently it does not support Microsoft® Windows.

Install


Prerequisites ~~~~~~~~~~~~~

  • ruby 1.8.x or 1.9.x

  • ruby 1.8-dev or 1.9-dev

  • openssl ruby extension (On Ubuntu/Debian it is available as libopenssl-ruby1.X)

  • zlib ruby extension

  • rubygems

  • C build tools (gcc etc) (e.g. build-essential on Ubuntu, Xcode on MacOS)

  • libsqlite3

  • libsqlite3-dev

  • gnutls 2.4.1 or later (Only necessary in case SSL support is required)

  • gnutls-dev 2.4.1 or later (Only necessary in case SSL support is required)

Procedure ~~~~~~~~~

WebROaR can installed using the following commands:


sudo gem install webroar sudo webroar install


NOTE

.SSL Support

In case you would like to setup SSL support for the server, use the following command line switch with *sudo webroar install* command mentioned above.


sudo webroar install –ssl-support


Configure further SSL options in the server’s admin panel

*http://<yourservername>:<port>/admin-panel/configuration*

After restarting the server, admin panel would now also be accessible over SSL. *https://<yourservername>:<port>/admin-panel*

Or if you like living in the fast lane, you can install the edge version giving the following commands:


git clone git://github.com/webroar/webroar.git cd webroar sudo rake install


NOTE

.SSL Support

To build with SSL support, use the following additional switch with the *sudo rake install* command:


sudo rake install ssl=yes


Configure further SSL options in the server’s admin panel

*http://<yourservername>:<port>/admin-panel/configuration*

After restarting the server, admin panel would now also be accessible over SSL. *https://<yourservername>:<port>/admin-panel*

Known Issue


WebROaR with SSL build crashes on Ubuntu 10.04 upon execution of ‘gnutls_handshake’ by secure connection.