1. Update Ubuntu before we start
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get upgrade

2. Check whether MySQL is already installed
$ mysql --version
mysql Ver 14.12 Distrib 5.0.75, for debian-linux-gnu (x86_64) using readline 5.2
MySQL was already installed so OK to proceed.

2. Install Ruby
$ sudo apt-get install ruby irb rdoc
$ ruby -v
ruby 1.8.7 (2008-08-11 patchlevel 72) [x86_64-linux]

4. Install Ruby Gems (the Ruby package management system)
There are two ways to install Ruby Gems on Ubuntu, either through apt-get or by downloading the Gem archive and running the set up script. I tried the apt-get method as that looked quicker:

$ sudo apt-get install rubygems1.8
$ sudo gem update --system

Unfortunately the apt-get package disables the gem update --system and insists that you use apt to update instead. This might be more preferable to the Linux Sysadmin crowd but I prefer to keep everything pure Ruby. It's a few extra commands but nothing too bad.

$ wget http://rubyforge.org/frs/download.php/60718/rubygems-1.3.5.tgz
$ tar xzvf rubygems-1.3.5.tgz
$ cd rubygems-1.3.5/
$ sudo ruby setup.rb
$ gem -v
$ sudo gem update --system

5. Install and test Rails
$ sudo gem install rails
$ cd
$ rails hello
$ cd hello
$ script/server
...
/usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/rails-2.3.3/lib/initializer.rb:271:in `require_frameworks': no such file to load -- net/https (RuntimeError)

A quick Google of this error message revealed that I probably should have installed the Ruby OpenSSL library when I originally installed Ruby.
$ sudo apt-get install libopenssl-ruby
$ script/server
This time the Mongrel server started fine.

6. Install Passenger (mod_rails)
The Rails community seem to all be switching from Mongrel to Passanger, the mod_rails Apache plug-in module. I was keen to see how a Passenger deployment compares to Mongrel.
$ sudo gem install passenger
...
Failed to build gem native extension.
Apparently the libraries needed to build a Gem that contains native code isn't included with the main Ruby package, you need to install the Ruby Dev package too (something else I should have installed when I installed Ruby).
$ sudo apt-get install ruby1.8-dev
$ sudo gem install passenger
$ sudo passenger-install-apache2-module

Following the prompts and messages on screen it turned out I didn't have a number of Apache libraries. The passenger installer is very good and gives you the exact commands to run:
* To install Apache 2 development headers:
Please run apt-get install apache2-prefork-dev as root.
* To install Apache Portable Runtime (APR) development headers:
Please run apt-get install libapr1-dev as root.
* To install Apache Portable Runtime Utility (APU) development headers:
Please run apt-get install libaprutil1-dev as root.

I only needed to run the first command as the other two packages must have been pulled in as dependencies.


$ sudo passenger-install-apache2-module
...
The Apache 2 module was successfully installed.