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leamas edited this page Sep 23, 2010 · 39 revisions

Using apache instead of thin server on Fedora

##General

This page covers the steps which makes diaspora server running on port 3000. Besides this, most users have a need to making this server available to the outside world on port 80. This is not covered at this point. Personally, I just forwarded port 80 on my router to port 3000 on my box.

You can get the same basic behavior that nginx proxy uses from the proxy_balancer Apache mod. With this you can put in a rewrite rule for /diaspora and send it to port 3000. You would still need port 8080 open for the EM server, but there is no reason a basic proxy mechanic shouldn't work. I haven't tried it, but it's the path least fraught with peril.

##Passenger A common way to run Rails apps on Apache is the Passenger apache module. See http://www.modrails.com/documentation/Users%20guide.html

There is no Fedora passenger rpm ATM, see https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=470696

See also Installing on Ubuntu Apache

Install passenger module

To setup apache to run diaspora:

  sudo gem install passenger
  sudo  yum install apr-devel httpd-devel rubygem-rake
  sudo passenger-install-apache2-module

Create a new file /etc/httpd/conf.d/passenger.conf with content as given from passenger-install-apache2-module. For me, this was:

 LoadModule passenger_module /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/passenger-2.2.15/ext/apache2/mod_passenger.so
 PassengerRoot /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/passenger-2.2.15
 PassengerRuby /usr/bin/ruby

Make diaspora accessible from apache as a rails rack app

Copy the complete diaspora application to e. g., /usr/local/webapps to avoid troubles when apache can't access files in your ordinary home dir. Avoid storing the app under /var/www, seems that rewriting rules becomes unhappy in some cases then (?)

    cd <parent of diaspora dir>
    sudo mkdir /usr/local/webapps
    sudo mv diaspora /usr/local/webapps
    mkdir /usr/local/webapps/diaspora/tmp  # All rack apps should have a tmp dir.
    chown -R apache /usr/local/webapps/diaspora

Install the bundle

    sudo bundle install --system
    mkdir -p devise.git/ruby
    ln -s /usr/lib/ruby/gems/* devise.git/ruby/

Configure apache server instance

Create a virtual http server for the diaspora app by appending something like this to /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf (using your own servername for host.domain.tld):

Listen 3000
<virtualhost *:3000>
    ServerName     host.domain.tld
    DocumentRoot   /usr/local/webapps/diaspora
    RailsEnv       development
    RackEnv        development
     <Directory /usr/local/webapps/diaspora/public>
        AllowOverride None
        Order         allow,deny
        Allow         from all
    </Directory>
</virtualhost>

Run and access server

Restart server using 'server httpd restart'.

Access the server on http://host.domain.tld:3000

Bugs

  • At this point, adding friends from this server to other servers fails with a "Connection timeout" message.

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