Installing Ruby on Rails on Web Servers

Last modified: 03 Jan 2008

H-Sphere 3.1 and up includes support for Ruby on Rails via FastCGI. However, before enabling it in hosting plans, administrators need to manually install Ruby on Rails on their Unix Web servers.

1. Log into CP server as cpanel
2. ssh to a Web server where you will install Ruby on Rails.
3. Install the Ruby package from its home page:
   1. Download the latest ruby package with wget for Linux or fetch for FreeBSD (in this document we use version 1.8-5p2 as an example, but the version could be updated):

      wget http://ftp.ruby-lang.org/pub/ruby/1.8/ruby-1.8.5-p2.tar.gz

   2. Untar the package:

      tar zxvf ruby-1.8.5-p2.tar.gz
      cd ruby-1.8.5-p2

   3. Compile and install the package:

      ./configure
      make
      make install
      

4. Install Ruby Gems:
   1. Download the latest Ruby Gems version with wget for Linux or fetch for FreeBSD (in this document we use version 0.9.4 as an example, but this version could be updated):

      wget http://rubyforge.org/frs/download.php/17190/rubygems-0.9.4.tgz

   2. tar xzvf rubygems-0.9.4.tgz
      cd rubygems-0.9.4
      ruby setup.rb
      

5. Complete Ruby on Rails installation:

   gem install rails --include-dependencies
   gem install -y fcgi -- --build-flags --with-fcgi-dir=/hsphere/shared/
   

After that, switch the Ruby on Rails resource on under Web Services in a Unix hosting plan to enable RoR for users.