What is it?

rails_server is a bunch of Ansible playbooks, that helps you to setup new server and to deploy Rails application along with database dump.

What technologies it covers?

• Ubuntu 16.04 or newer (for 20.04 please use ubuntu-20-04 branch
• ZSH, Oh My ZSH!
• PostgreSQL
• NodeJS
• ImageMagick
• Yarn
• Rust
• Redis
• RVM, Ruby MRI
• Monit
• Let's Encrypt (certbot)

Also there are some hardcoded limits:

• Ubuntu and PostgreSQL user can be named only as deploy

Setup

cd your-rails-project-folder
git clone git@github.com:gambala/rails_server.git server
echo /server >> .gitignore
git commit -am "Gitignore server folder"
cp server/hosts.all.example.yml server/hosts.all.yml
cp server/hosts.production.example.yml server/hosts.production.yml
ansible-galaxy install -r server/requirements.yml

Usage

With brand new server

1. Create server on your hosting
2. Update credentials in server/hosts files and in capistrano config files
3. Run commands:

ansible-playbook server/setup-initial.yml -i server/hosts.all.yml -i server/hosts.production.yml -e 'ansible_port=22'
ansible-playbook server/setup-server.yml -i server/hosts.all.yml -i server/hosts.production.yml

With configured server

0. Place your cap templates in the proper folder

• /config/deploy/templates/nginx_conf.erb
• /config/deploy/templates/puma.rb.erb

1. Run commands:

ansible-playbook server/setup-app.yml -i server/hosts.all.yml -i server/hosts.production.yml
cap production setup
cap production puma:config
cap production puma:nginx_config
cap production deploy

2. Ssh to your new server and run command:

sudo service nginx restart

or for new server:

sudo service nginx start

If you stuck with errors, you can diagnose your nginx config with:

sudo nginx -c /etc/nginx/nginx.conf -t

With data from old server

1. Ssh to your old server
2. Make DB dump and uploads (from carrierwave for example) archive:

pg_dump --clean --format c --verbose --blobs --no-owner --file project_production.dump project_production
tar -czvf project_production_uploads.tar.gz apps/app_name/shared/public/uploads/

3. Download these files to your server/files folder:

scp -P 4000 deploy@site.com:project_production.dump server/files
scp -P 4000 deploy@site.com:project_production_uploads.tar.gz server/files

4. Run role:

ansible-playbook server/restore-data.yml -i server/hosts.all.yml -i server/hosts.production.yml

Under the hood

Each playbook runs specific roles, listed below.

setup-initial.yml

• Installs Python2 in order to allow Ansible do all the work
• Installs pip, python packet manager
• Creates deploy user which is our main user for application deployments
• Configures git, zsh and oh-my-zsh for root user

setup-server.yml

• Configures zsh and oh-my-zsh for deploy user
• Adds en_US.UTF-8 locale
• Installs curl, htop, landscape-common, ncdu and vim
• Installs and configures fail2ban
• Installs NodeJS
• Adds 2GB swapfile
• Installs Nginx with specific configs (one of them includes the code for certbot)
• Installs ImageMagick, Yarn and Rust
• Installs Redis
• Installs RVM and Ruby
• Installs PostgreSQL and creates deploy superuser in it
• Installs Monit for server state monitoring and notifications (RAM, HDD, etc)
• Installs Certbot and registers in it with email from hosts

setup-app.yml

• Creates PostgreSQL database for your Rails application
• Issues ssl certificates with certbot for domains from your hosts
• Automates daily DB backups with uploading to AWS S3

restore-data.yml

• Uploads database dump and restores it on server
• Uploads uploads archive and unzip in on server

Additional steps

Turn monit web interface on

Run sudo nano /etc/monit/monitrc and write this to file:

set daemon 30

set logfile /var/log/monit.log

set idfile /var/lib/monit/id

set statefile /var/lib/monit/state

set eventqueue
    basedir /var/lib/monit/events # set the base directory where events will be stored
    slots 100 # optionally limit the queue size

set httpd port 2812 and
    allow admin:monit      # require user 'admin' with password 'monit'

include /etc/monit/conf.d/*
include /etc/monit/conf-enabled/*

Then run sudo monit reload.

Add nginx to monit

Run sudo nano /etc/monit/conf-enabled/nginx and write this:

 check process nginx with pidfile /var/run/nginx.pid
   group www
   group nginx
   start program = "/etc/init.d/nginx start"
   stop program = "/etc/init.d/nginx stop"
#  if failed port 80 protocol http request "/" then restart
   if 5 restarts with 5 cycles then timeout
   depend nginx_bin
   depend nginx_rc

 check file nginx_bin with path /usr/sbin/nginx
   group nginx
   include /etc/monit/templates/rootbin

 check file nginx_rc with path /etc/init.d/nginx
   group nginx
   include /etc/monit/templates/rootbin

Then run sudo monit reload.