There are many competing mantras about how to best deploy a ruby web application into a ‘production’ state. Some people just say, ‘start up your framework’s WEBrick server on 80 and go for it!’ Others, like myself want more stability and security — for that we turn to Passenger. Passenger provides support for Rackable ruby apps on Apache and Nginx.

I’ve always liked the Apache+Passenger configuration when installing on CentOS — I can schedule regular yum updates to upgrade Apache and gem updates to upgrade Passenger. This way, I know that I’ve got the latest and most secure versions running on my systems. With monitoring and testing, I know if something breaks and can fix it promptly.

After setting up my fresh CentOS 6 machine, I found the Nginx yum repos which will happily keep Nginx updated. Great. I then went about doing the usual rvm+ruby+gem+passenger dance. I ran passenger-install-nginx-module to initiate the passenger+nginx config and ran into this:

Nginx doesn't support loadable modules such as some other web servers do,
so in order to install Nginx with Passenger support, it must be recompiled.

Do you want this installer to download, compile and install Nginx for you?

 1. Yes: download, compile and install Nginx for me. (recommended)
    The easiest way to get started. A stock Nginx 1.0.15 with Passenger
    support, but with no other additional third party modules, will be
    installed for you to a directory of your choice.

 2. No: I want to customize my Nginx installation. (for advanced users)
    Choose this if you want to compile Nginx with more third party modules
    besides Passenger, or if you need to pass additional options to Nginx's
    'configure' script. This installer will  1) ask you for the location of
    the Nginx source code,  2) run the 'configure' script according to your
    instructions, and  3) run 'make install'.

Whichever you choose, if you already have an existing Nginx configuration file,
then it will be preserved.

Enter your choice (1 or 2) or press Ctrl-C to abort: 

‘Doesn’t support loadable modules’… ‘stock Nginx 1.0.15′… ‘compile’. Nope.

So… I can allow passenger to build itself into an old version of nginx (1.0.15) or I can download the Nginx source and recompile it with Passenger support. This is where Nginx lost me.

If I want to run a ruby app through Nginx using Passenger (or any other module that integrates Ruby support) I’ll have to recompile Nginx every time there’s an update to either system. Judging by the release frequency of Nginx, that requires recompiling at least once per month. Or, of course, I could just let my system languish and not upgrade regularly. That’ll only leave me open to vulnerabilities in either system, which is not cool.

So I’ll return to Apache+Passenger which supports dynamic module loading and independently updating components. A secure system is a happy system.

Google just announced their I/O 2012 event which takes place June 27th – 29th. To demonstrate the cool stuff they’ll be presenting they released a small Chrome app which allows you to build a Rube Goldberg machine in your browser. I played with it for a while — it’s pretty cool. Check out the Input/Output machine I created.

I just got notifications that all my domains were successfully transferred to my new registrar. I’m now using DynaDot which is a vocal opponent of SOPA. The reason I transferred was partially to promote anti-SOPA messages and also for privacy reasons. Hopefully I’ll be much happier with my new service.

Check out the video below for information about PIPA/SOPA and why you should join the fight to oppose these proposed laws.

1. Download the latest release of FreeNAS from the downloads page. The version I downloaded was titled ‘FreeNAS-amd64-embedded-0.7.2.5543.img’. Make sure you get the .img file, not the .iso.
2. Plug your flash drive into your computer and open a new terminal window.
3. Using diskutil, find the device node for your flash drive:

   mac:~ alex$ diskutil list
   /dev/disk0
      #:                  TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
      0: GUID_partition_scheme                        *500.1 GB   disk0
      1:                   EFI                         209.7 MB   disk0s1
      2:             Apple_HFS Macintosh HD            499.8 GB   disk0s2
   /dev/disk1
      #:                  TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
      0:                       CDROM                  *512.5 MB   disk1

4. The flash drive’s device node in the above output is /dev/disk1. Now, unmount the drive:

   mac:~ alex$ diskutil unmountDisk /dev/disk1
   Unmount of all volumes on disk1 was successful

5. Next, we’ll extract the image’s contents onto the flash drive. Warning: This will delete all of the data off of the drive.

   mac:~ alex$ sudo dd if=~/Downloads/FreeNAS-amd64-embedded-0.7.2.5543.img of=/dev/disk1
   203632+0 records in
   203632+0 records out
   104259584 bytes transferred in 66.608632 secs (1565256 bytes/sec)

6. Lastly, eject the drive.

   $ diskutil eject /dev/disk1
   Disk /dev/disk1 ejected

Now you can use the flash drive to boot off of and run your FreeNAS instance from. Good times!

Checking the HTTP headers revealed the following:

Server: Apache/2.2.4 (Linux/SUSE)

I’ll take that as a No.

For the record, I use the LAMP stack for my sites. I am messing around with offline development and needed an environment.

I, like many other Minecrafters, have lots of wonderful ideas to share with the Minecraft community. Frequently, we share our ideas by starting Minecraft, building our idea and taking screenshots and videos. These images and videos are uploaded to imgur or youtube and the links are shared. I found this to be a bit of a hassle.

Thus, MineDraft was born. With MineDraft, you can create your ideas in a simple to use interface, create a link to the design and share it with your friends. No more video editing or image cropping. No need to upload anything. Just draft and share.

MineDraft.net

Check it out on Reddit too!

Of all the water on the Earth, only 2.5% of it is suitable for drinking and less than 1% of that water is readily accessible to humans. This means that approximately 1 in 8 people don’t have access to clean drinking water. Here are some disheartening facts about water:

• More people have access to cell phones than to toilets. As a result, tons of untreated human waste make their way to water sources causing a litany of diseases, and even death.
• The US, Mexico and China lead the world in bottled water consumption, with people in the US drinking an average of 200 bottles of water per person each year. Over 17 million barrels of oil are needed to manufacture those water bottles, 86 percent of which will never be recycled.
• 17% of the world’s population lack access to clean drinking water. This is improved from 22% in 1990.
• Water shortages near water bottling plants have been reported all over, including Wisconsin, New Hampshire, Florida and Texas.
• Countries that have made decisions to not permit the privitization of water include Uruguay, Malaysia and India.
• The NRDC tested 103 bottled waters and found over 25% were simply tap water Several tested failed the bacteria test.
• 1.5 million barrels of crude oil are used annually to produce the plastic used to bottle water.
• 90% of the cost of a bottle of water is for label, cap and bottle.

More information is here: http://www.joindiaspora.com/2010/09/15/developer-release.html

• custom backgrounds and headers
• shortlinks
• menus (no more file editing)
• post types
• taxonomies
• long-awaited merge of MU and WordPress

It also includes a new default theme called Twenty Ten. It looks pretty sexy.

Hopefully I’ll get to upgrade everything soon.

Hmmm, maybe there’ll be a beta. I would love to be part of that!

Part 1:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5THiN8szSKM

Part 2:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bq2mZoKkqMw

Part 3:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGlyQmmvj0w