Description

This cookbook defines recipes useful for configuring Rails Apps running on:

• Apache
• Passenger
• RVM

It configures Apache, and sets up the initial directory structure for the application using values defined in an encrypted data bag.

Requirements

This cookbook requires the following cookbooks:

• Opscode's apache2
• Fletcher Nichol's rvm
• Fletcher Nichol's rvm_passenger

You will also need to create a shared key for the encrypted data bag. Read Usage for more information.

Attributes

This cookbook defines one attribute:

node[:rails_apps] = []

This attribute should specify the data bag items that should be read from the rails_apps data bag. You must define this in a role

default_attributes(
  "rails_apps" => ["item_name"]
)

Usage

The following recipes are defined:

• default - Installs Apache, RVM, and Passenger. You may want override the default attributes for each of these recipes. Also installs several Apache modules: mod_expires, mod_xsendfile, and mod_ssl (if any of the data bags specify enable_ssl)
• setup - creates intial directory structure for rails apps, using a layout similar to that which capistrano would expect.
• apache_config - Configures Apache/Passenger.

Set up an Encrypted Data Bag

This cookbook reaquires an encrypted data bag named rails_apps. This requires that the Chef Server and all nodes have a shared secret key. You'll need to make sure each node has a copy of the key in the default location: /etc/chef/encrypted_data_bag_secret. You'll also need a copy on your managment system. You can generate a key by running the following command:

openssl rand -base64 512 | tr -d '\r\n' > ~/.chef/encrypted_data_bag_secret

Now, create a regular data bag if you haven't already:

knife data bag create rails_apps 

Then, create an encrypted item for your app:

knife data bag create rails_apps <appname> --secret-file ~/.chef/encrypted_data_bag_secret

Each value in the JSON file will be encrypted. You can save this file locally by running:

knife data bag show rails_apps <appname> -Fj > data_bags/rails_apps/<appname>.json

You can also edit existing data bags by running:

knife data bag edit rails_apps <appname> --secret-file ~/.chef/encrypted_data_bag_secret

The rails_apps data bag

Each item in the rails_apps data bag should contain the following information. Notice each app's stages contain database information that will get written to a database.yml file.

"id": "UNIQUE_DATA_BAG_ID",
"appname":"YOUR_APP_NAME",
"stages": {
    "production": {
        "deploy_user":"USERNAME",
        "deploy_group":"GROUPNAME",
        "hostname":"example.com",
        "aliases":["www.example.com", ],
        "min_instances":0,
        "redirect_from":"",
        "enable":false,
        "ip_address":"192.168.0.1",  # may also be "*",
        "enable_send_file_allow_above":false,   # see XSendFile notes below
        "send_file_path":"/home/deploy/shared/files",
        "enable_ssl":true, 
        "ssl_port":"443",
        "ssl_cert_file":"CONTENT-OF-SSL-CERT-FILE-AS-AN-ARRAY",
        "ssl_cert_key_file":"CONTENT-OF-SSL-CERT-KEY-FILE-AS-AN-ARRAY",
        "ssl_cert_chain_file":"CONTENT-OF-SSL-CERT-BUNDLE-FILE-AS-AN-ARRAY",
        "database" : {
            "adapter": "postgresql",
            "dbname":  "DATABASENAME",
            "host": "127.0.0.1",
            "port": 5432,
            "username": "DATABASEUSERNAME",
            "password": "DATABASEPASSWORD"
            "encoding": "unicode",
            "reconnect": "true",
            "pool":"25",
            "timeout":"5000"
        }
    }
}

XSendFile Notes:

The enable_send_file_allow_above attribute adds the XSendFileAllowAbove on declaration to the apache config. By default, we do not include this delcaration as it's deprecated in modern versions of XSendFile. Typically, this should only be enabled when provisioning nodes with older distros.

The send_file_path attribute adds the XSendFilePath <absolute path> declaration to the apache config. This is the current method for defining paths from which files are sent. This method supersedes XSendFileAllowAbove.

SSL notes:

The ssl_cert_file, ssl_cert_key_file, and ssl_cert_chain_file, entries must be listed as an array, where each line of text in the file is an element in the array. For example:

"ssl_cert_file":[
    '-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----', 
    'MIID1DCCArwCCQCmIu63Dgum5zANBgkqhkiG9w0BAQUFADCBqzELMAkGA1UEBhMC', 
    'pEHhcc5trTnv+L8R0i7wlsxW6B0M3BROFrDQa8fZsmFbUTSlIqExC+gsxF7OkzGr', 
        # ...
    'VwSASh4x2fcll27jmyc1BgfLcIIrvYJMzyPF+epzsvLL3DuVHodRm8zTM7JIQnT8', 
    '8DCBC4i2TeH+OV6jLZegXEmsvukWVgzL', 
    '-----END CERTIFICATE-----'
]

If your app does not use SSL certs, you can omit ssl_port, ssl_cert_file, ssl_cert_key_file, and ssl_cert_chain_file, though you should include enable_ssl:false.

Application Directories

Apps directories will be owned by deploy_user:deploy_group. The directory structure for each app will be as follows:

/home/deploy_user/app_name/stage_name

License and Author

Author:: Brad Montgomery (bmontgomery@coroutine.com)

Copyright 2012, Coroutine.

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at

http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under the License.