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Starting from scratch

Added by Matt Cushing over 15 years ago

Greetings,

I'm just getting started with the Agile Web Development book on Rails at home, and since we needed a bug tracking system, I thought I might as well try to get the upper managers used to having Rails around - why not try Redmine.

At this point, we're about to move most of our stuff into upgraded machines in a DataCenter, so I can pretty much set up anything at this point. I'm trying to get some advice from people who know more about it (which is everyone here at this point) as to what configuration is the best way to set up a Ruby/ROR Application server. I'd like to start with Redmine and gradually put all of my apps on it. I've built a few at home, but they don't amount to much. Once I get better, I'd like to start doing projects at work in RoR instead of C#.

I don't need the fastest, you have to configure this thing for hours, type server, but something that isn't going to suck :) I'd like to stick with Windows 2003 server, but that's about all I am shooting for.

Any suggestions?


Replies (6)

RE: Starting from scratch - Added by Thomas Lecavelier over 15 years ago

My redmine instance work great on my poor debian box with a K6/2@350MHz. Sure, if you have to set W2K3, you need and heavier config. The major problem with W2K3 is to deal with Windows services. If you haven't any ISS service on it, it could be suitable, even I discourage to put RoR apps on a Microsoft OS in production. Could you speak a little longer about your redmine usage: how many projects, users, simultaneous connection you think you'll have?

RE: Starting from scratch - Added by Wassim Hafez over 15 years ago

Thomas,

We'd like to deploy Redmine on W2K3. We are considering Redmine for 50-75 users (possibly more depending on how receptive the different teams will be) but we expect no more than 10-15 simultaneously active projects. Also, not all teams will be utilizing the repository functionality.

1. Are there recommended installation & configuration instructions for W2K3 server (with both IIS and Apache)?
2. What scalability factors, if any, should we take into consideration before we deploy for production under W2K3? (e.g., number of projects, number of users, number of simultaneous connections, database/repository/attachments size, ...)

Any recommendations would be appreciated. Thanks.

RE: Starting from scratch - Added by Matt Cushing over 15 years ago

it's really just me digging my way out of a big pile of 'stuff'. At this point I have built about 15-20 applications that range from 1 user to 1000 users. I'm just now managing to have separate dev and prod environments and I want to start tracking which issues/fixes are matched with what releases.

I installed a VMWare appliance of Ubuntu 8.0.4 desktop (I would do server, but I'm a command line idiot), and followed some instructions on getting the box ready, and finally got it all up and running. Still having some issues getting to it from the outside, but that's a VMware issue.

The only other issue I'm having is not having any css at all. The instructions I followed - http://mugunth.blogspot.com/2008/07/steps-to-deploy-redmine-application-in.html made mention of untaring the files into etc/www, which unless I am mistaken about apache2, doesn't exist. There is a var/www so I put it there. Tried changing permissions and making sure there was no .htaccess file in the public folder, but no luck.

From what I can tell, it's working fairly well. I'd really like to get to the point where people would be able to put in their own issues and I can either deal with them in code, or sic the Help Desk guys on it.

RE: Starting from scratch - Added by Thomas Lecavelier over 15 years ago

Wassim,

I warmly recommand you Apache: since IIS is both windows and proprietary softwares, very few people here could help you to setup IIS for a RoR application (I don't even know if IIS provide a reverse_proxy feature). My personnal recommended serving architecture (which would not necessary be the same that other people here) is a cluster of thin server, attacked by an apache reverse proxy: this arch' is very scalable and for your usage, you shouldn't meet problem before a lot of time. Nota that a confortable setup require thin as services, which you have to create yourself. If I had well understood, you havn't any "true" sysadmin at home, so you should fallback to mongrel-cluster: mongrel is a little less efficient than thin, but do honorably its job (and there's plenty of doc about running mongrel as a windows service).

For database, I recommand you MySQL, since ActiveRecord (ORM layer of RoR) is very MySQL focused. For every other points, you don't need extravagant things: files dir have just to find some Mo to eat.

Last recommandation: For 75 users, I think a cluster of 4 thin/mongrel servers should be far sufficient.

HTH

RE: Starting from scratch - Added by Mugunth Subramanian over 15 years ago

Hi Matt,
Thanks for dropping by my blog post: http://mugunth.blogspot.com/2008/07/steps-to-deploy-redmine-application-in.html

Yes, the directory should be /var/www , not /etc/www.
For me also css/images didnt load initially (when my redmine directory was not inside /var/www). But this got resolved when I put redmine directory inside /var/www

RE: Starting from scratch - Added by Matt Cushing over 15 years ago

Hi Mugunth,

No sweat! Except for the gem issue, it worked great! You might want to put in the trick of deleting the .htaccess from the public directory just in case. I put mine in the /var/www directory too, but didn't see the css until I ditched the .htaccess file.

M@

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