Setting Up Ubuntu Server for Ruby on Rails Deployment

This article describes how I setup Ubuntu server for Ruby on Rails application deployment. I am on MacBook as workstation and running Ubuntu on VPS server. At the end of this article, you should get Access Right, SSH and Git ready.

Login your Ubuntu

Login via SSH:

ssh root@123.456.789.123

Change your root password immediately:

passwd

You should not log in as root apart from the initial setup. Use sudo to run root-level command instead and related log is written to ‘/var/log/messages’.

Add a group ‘pilots’ to contain users with sudo privileges:

groupadd pilots

Install nano as default editor

Install aptitude to replace apt-get for better package management:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install aptitude

Install nano:

sudo aptitude install nano

Change default editor from ‘vi’ to ‘nano’:

export EDITOR=/usr/bin/nano
visudo

Add these lines to the end of the file:

# Allows user in group pilots to run all commands
%pilots  ALL=(ALL)  ALL

Add a new user and configure it for SSH

Add user to ‘pilots’ group:

adduser lorenz
usermod -a -G pilots lorenz

On local workstation, generate SSH keys and SCP to Ubuntu server:

mkdir ~/.ssh
ssh-keygen -t rsa
scp ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub lorenz@202.181.234.41:

Move the public key file to ‘.ssh’ directory:

mkdir ~lorenz/.ssh
mv ~lorenz/id_rsa.pub ~lorenz/.ssh/authorized_keys

Set permission on the keys:

chown -R lorenz:lorenz ~lorenz/.ssh
chmod 700 ~lorenz/.ssh
chmod 600 ~lorenz/.ssh/authorized_keys

Edit SSH configuration at ‘/etc/ssh/sshd_config’:

Port 12345  <-- Change from default port 22 to other ports
Protocol 2
PermitRootLogin no
PasswordAuthentication yes  <-- Enable user to login on other workstation without the private key
UseDNS no
AllowUsers lorenz

Setting Up iptables

View the default iptables rules:

sudo iptables -L

Create a iptables rules file and replace with Slicehost default iptables rules:

sudo nano /etc/iptables.up.rules

Add a script to run implement the rules when the network interfaces are started:

sudo nano /etc/network/if-pre-up.d/iptables

#!/bin/sh
/sbin/iptables-restore < /etc/iptables.up.rules

Make the new script executable:

chmod +x /etc/network/if-pre-up.d/iptables

Test the setup

Reload sshd:

/etc/init.d/ssh reload

Try to SSH login on local workstation:

ssh -p 12345 lorenz@123.456.789.123

Customize your shell

Edit shell’s settings:

nano ~/.bashrc

Add alias to the end of .bashrc file:

alias free="free=m"

Activate the change by this command:

source ~/.bashrc

Customize your shell

Edit shell’s settings, then log out and log in again:

sudo locale
sudo locale-gen zh_HK.UTF-8
sudo update-locale LANG=zh_HK.UTF-8

Install Development Tools through aptitude

Edit enabled repositories list:

sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list

Install ‘build-essential’ package which include gcc, make, patch and so on:

sudo aptitude install build-essential

Install Git

Add Git User:

sudo adduser git

Create ‘.ssh’ directory:

sudo su git
cd /home/git
mkdir .ssh
chmod 700 .ssh
sudo su lorenz

As lorenz & git share the same public key, we copy authorized_keys to git user account:

sudo cp /home/lorenz/.ssh/authorized_keys /home/git/.ssh/
sudo chown git:git /home/git/.ssh/authorized_keys

Edit SSH configuration ‘/etc/ssh/sshd_config’ and reload SSH config:

AllowUsers lorenz git

Restrict shell access for the git user

Edit ‘/etc/passwd’ file and change the shell for git user

git:x:1001:1001:Git,,,:/home/git:/usr/bin/git-shell  <-- Changed from '/bin/bash' to '/usr/bin/git-shell'

Git User is secured and not able to SSH to server:

fatal: What do you think I am? A shell?
connection to 123.456.789.123 closed.

That’s it, we make a Ubuntu server ready for Rails application. Let’s follow the next article to deploy the Rails application to Ubuntu server via Git and Capistrano.

Reference

You might be interested in this Slicehost article which details how to set up a slice to run Ruby on Rails as well.

Related Posts

• Deploy Rails application via Git and Capistrano
• Setting Up your own DNS server with bind9
• Setting Up PHP FastCGI and phpMyAdmin with nginx

Tagged as: Git, Ruby on Rails, SSH, Ubuntu