Getting Started

Please note these instructions have been updated for Mac OS X Lion, and assumes this is what you are running. If you are not, you may need to refer to an older version of this document.

As our production environment is moving from Apache to Nginx, it makes more sense for our development environments to closely mirror that environment. It's going to be a bit of a journey to get there, so let's get started.

(Most of the following assumes you already have Xcode installed on your system. If not, go grab it from the Mac App Store

Step 1: Install Homebrew

If you're system is not new and you already have a /usr/local, your permissions may get in the way. Correct that by running:

[[ ! -d /usr/local ]] && sudo mkdir /usr/local
sudo chown -R $USER /usr/local

Install Homebrew:

ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.github.com/gist/323731)"

If you did have an existing /usr/local, you can see if there are any problems from what you already have in there by running:

brew doctor

Step 2: Install RVM

bash < <(curl -s https://rvm.beginrescueend.com/install/rvm)

Then add the following to your ~/.bash_profile:

'[[ -s "$HOME/.rvm/scripts/rvm" ]] && source "$HOME/.rvm/scripts/rvm"

Step 3: Install Ruby Enterprise Edition and Passenger

. $HOME/.rvm/scripts/rvm
rvm remove ree
export CC=/usr/bin/gcc-4.2
rvm install --force ree
rvm use ree
gem install passenger

Step 4: Install Nginx

rvm use ree
brew install nginx --with-passenger

Install the start-up plist:

if [ ! -e ~/Library/LaunchAgents ]; then
	mkdir ~/Library/LaunchAgents
fi

cp /usr/local/Cellar/nginx/`ls -1 /usr/local/Cellar/nginx| tail -n 1`/org.nginx.nginx.plist ~/Library/LaunchAgents

Step 5: Install MongoDB

If you previously had MongoDB installed you will need to unload mongodb and remove the launch daemon. Correct that by running:

sudo launchctl unload /Library/LaunchDaemons/org.mongodb.mongod.plist
sudo rm -r /Library/LaunchDaemons/org.mongodb.mongod.plist

Install MongoDB:

brew install mongodb

Read the Caveats presented after installation about installing or upgrading the launch daemon.

Check that MongoDB is running:

http://localhost:28017/

Step 6: Install MySQL (if you're needing to use it)

brew install mysql

Note the instructions for copying the .plist file if you want to have MySQL automatically start when you log in.

STOP! You probably did not read the above note and probably did not complete the instructions that brew provided after the brew install mysql command completed. Your MySQL installation is therefore probably not complete!

Step 7: Install PHP (optionally, but recommended) and spawn-fcgi

Install PHP 5.2 from our own, modified recipe

brew install https://raw.github.com/gist/1142557/9f5232aa169c121d605292c8062329a1f8132f55/php.rb --with-mysql

Note that --with-mysql should only be used above if you've installed MySQL in Step 6!

Then install spawn-fcgi:

brew install spawn-fcgi

Download a launchctl plist file to ensure this PHP server is running:

cd ~/Library/LaunchAgents
curl https://raw.github.com/gist/945447/724201ab0d5e2834eafae0444aa9c2e5ee977f3e > net.lighttpd.spawn-fcgi.plist
launchctl load -w ~/Library/LaunchAgents/net.lighttpd.spawn-fcgi.plist

Step 8: Back to nginx

Let's now replace the stock config with what we've got in this repo:

cd /usr/local/etc
mv nginx nginx.orig
# you might want to fork this repo so you can make your own changes...
# if so, go here: [[https://github.com/coverall/nginx/fork]]
git clone git@github.com:coverall/nginx.git

# all configs are going to point to /usr/local/sites, so let's link this
# up to your home...
cd /usr/local
ln -s ~/Sites sites

Now start it up with launchctl:

launchctl load -w ~/Library/LaunchAgents/org.nginx.nginx.plist

Step 8(a): Port 80 Forwarding (optional, but recommended)

Nginx runs under your own user, so it can't use a privileged port. Instead it runs on port 8080. You may want to have it run on port 80, and if so you can add a simple firewall script to forward the port. (This is totally optional.)

cd /Library/LaunchDaemons
sudo curl -O https://raw.github.com/gist/945906/d817356fb5db195c7c4c46fd39f5f5cac6db6e8f/com.coverallcrew.firewall.plist
sudo launchctl load -w com.coverallcrew.firewall.plist

If you want an easy way to restart nginx, add the following to your ~/.bash_profile file:

alias restart-nginx="kill \`cat /usr/local/var/run/nginx.pid\`"

Upstreams

If you look in /usr/local/etc/nginx/upstreams, you will see all of the "upstreams", or "proxies" we have defined. Note that the attendease API is set to run on port 4000, and so to start that up on that port, run:

cd /usr/local/sites/attendease
rails s -p 4000