This is currently the most popular solution to serve rails apps and is used by many big companies like Github, tweet, 37signals and so on. Also, it is very easy to setup in this way.
Config unicorn
Install gem unicorn:
Put gem ‘unicorn’
in Gemfile
then bundle install
Edit unicorn config file
Vim config/unicorn.rb
under your rails app root dir.
content:
# The ONLY two things you should change, if you don’t need any specialty.
app_name = "your_app_name"
number_of_app_instances = 2
# Set the working application directory. This should be your rails app root dir, not the public dir
app_root = File.expand_path(File.dirname(__FILE__) + '/..')
working_directory app_root
# File to store unicorn pid
# pid "/path/to/pids/unicorn.pid"
pid "#{app_root}/tmp/pids/unicorn.pid"
# Path to logs
# stderr_path "/path/to/log/unicorn.log"
# stdout_path "/path/to/log/unicorn.log"
stderr_path "#{app_root}/log/unicorn.log"
stdout_path "#{app_root}/log/unicorn.log"
# Unicorn socket
listen "/tmp/unicorn.#{app_name}.sock"
# Number of processes
worker_processes number_of_app_instances
# Time-out
timeout 30
Nginx config
Install nginx
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install nginx
Default nginx config file would be located in /etc/nginx
Nginx config file
Add a file in sites_available and put content:
upstream app {
# Path to Unicorn SOCK file, as defined previously
server unix:/tmp/unicorn.your_app_name.sock fail_timeout=0;
}
# configure server for your app
server {
listen 80;
server_name yourdomain.com www.yourdomain.com;
root /path/to/your/rails/root/public;
location ^~ /assets/ {
gzip_static on;
expires max;
add_header Cache-Control public;
}
try_files $uri @app;
location @app {
proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
proxy_set_header Host $http_host;
proxy_redirect off;
proxy_pass http://app;
}
}
Make a soft link in sites-enabled
to the above nginx config file
Reload nginx
sudo service nginx restart
Start serving
Compile assets: rake assets:precompile
If you only want to server your app in development environment, you don’t need this step.
Start unicorn in production
bundle exec unicorn -c config/unicorn.rb -E production