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If you haven't already, ssh to your VM as root.

Ubuntu

Ubuntu is a commonly used both as a desktop and as a server platform. For a thorough introduction to Ubuntu Server, I recommend the Ubuntu Server Book. Now that you're ssh'd into the VM, let's take a look at what has been installed with Ubuntu 14.04.

(VM) $ ls /

This will show you a list of directories that were created when you installed Ubuntu. Let's take a look at the directories we will use in this curriculum.

etc

Both your server and services that run on your server require config files. You can alter these files to change how your servers or services run. This directory is where those config files live. (Source: Ubuntu Server Book)

var

This directory stores files and directories who's sizes vary (hence the "var" name of the directory). This includes all system logs and web server documents. Of particular note:

  • /var/log stores all system logs. If a service is returning errors, this is a good place to look for the log that will help you troubleshoot.
  • /var/www stores all web documents if your server is a web server. Our Rails app will live in this directory when we deploy it. (Source: Ubuntu Server Book)

Parts of a Rails Web Server

There are many types of servers that can be run with Ubuntu (DNS servers, web servers, mail servers, etc.).

In this tutorial we will be configuring an Ubuntu web server. There are three main parts that make up a server which can run a Rails application. We will configure each of these parts shortly. For now, here is a brief intro to each piece:

Web Server

We will be using Apache as the software to run our web server.

For an excellent explanation of what a web server is and an intro to Apache, please see this outstanding article

Application Server

Apache cannot serve up Rails applications by default. We need to add an additional service called an application server in order to make it work.

In this tutorial, we will be using Phusion Passenger.

Confused about the difference between a web server like Apache and an application server like Passenger? You are not alone. Check out this fantastic explanation on Stack Overflow.

Database

Rails applications need a database. By default, Rails uses SQLite, but in this tutorial we're going to use PostgreSQL.

SQLite, PostgreSQL, and MySQL are all common databases used with Rails. For a detailed explanation of the differences among these databases, please see this article

Let's move onto the next article and start actually configuring these pieces!