RVM and thin, root vs. local user

Question

So I'm trying to get thin to run as a service with RVM. After a thin install I manually updated /etc/init.d/thin to use an su - user when running the config command so that thin was running as a local user, rather than root. So far so good.

Now, when I try to sudo service thin start it looks like it's trying to use the non-RVM version of Ruby (1.8.7 which was installed on the box to start with) to actually execute the command. I did a gem install thin on the non-RVM version, which then gets me a uninitialized constant Bundler message—Bundler is only installed in the RVM gems, not the system gems. It looks like I can't get the RVM environment set up (even though my RVM startup script is in ~/.bashrc which is then included in ~/.bash_profile).

All I want to do is run thin as a service using the RVM environment, not the system environment. Is this even possible? Should I just give up and commit the ultimate sin of running everything as root? It's very tempting at this point.

Thanks for any help!

Washhouse

Answer 1

RVM comes with a handy wrapper generator that creates an intermediary loader for an init.d script. This allows you to load a service using a particular Ruby version and gemset. I use it like this (after installing the thin gem):

1 - create init.d entry for thin

sudo thin install 

2 - set up some defaults

sudo /usr/sbin/update-rc.d -f thin defaults 

3 - generate boot config for your rails app

sudo thin config -C /etc/thin/<appname>.yml -c /var/rails/<appdir> --servers 4 -e production

4 - generate rvm wrapper script

rvm wrapper <rubyversion>@<gemset> bootup thin

5 - If you're using a global gemset, you can just use

rvm wrapper ruby-1.9.2-p125 bootup thin

6 - edit thin init

sudo nano /etc/init.d/thin

7 - change the original loader

DAEMON=/usr/local/rvm/gems/ruby-<rubyversion>-<rubyrevision>@<gemset>/bin/thin

8 - to point to the rvm wrapper instead

DAEMON=/usr/local/bin/bootup_thin

9 - start it up

sudo service thin start

If you're running more than one app, just generate a boot config yml file for each one; when booting thin all yml files in /etc/thin/ are parsed. More info here:

http://wiki.rubyonrails.org/deployment/nginx-thin?rev=1233246014 nb: This is linking to a revision, the most current version has been edited to be empty. Consider looking at the link without the ?rev=... in the url, the current version may be back and potentially more up to date.

HTH

2013 BONUS EDIT

While I no longer use RVM in production, thin is still my production server of choice, and I still use steps 1-3 above to get started. But the default configuration it generates can do with a few tweaks, here are some of mine:

Set the user & group that thin runs as:

user: www-data
group: www-data

Remove the port config and switch to using sockets instead (a little faster):

# port: 3000
socket: tmp/sockets/<appname>.sock

Tell thin to restart instances one by one, instead of shutting them all down before starting up again (rolling restart):

onebyone: true

Give the server processes a "tag" to help identify them (in ps aux etc):

tag: <appname>

Kassiekassity

Thanks for the reply! I ended up going the root route in the original project, but I'll use this method instead next time! – Washhouse

I'm running rvm under my user account. I used rvmsudo thin install, and my rvm-thin wrapper was placed in /home/<username>/.rvm/bin/ Also I put used update-rc.d thin defaults, but YMMV – Glyptodont

Thanks! but: sudo /usr/sbin/update-rc.d -f thin defaults (defaults not default) – Mazur

So that basically means you can't run thin as a service when having multiple applications with different gemsets? Another thing is, for deployment bundler installs gems in vendor/bundle, not in rvm gemset folder, so rvm can't even find thin executable. – Rhinehart

A quick note, /usr/local/bin/bootup_thin should be /path/to/rvm/bin/bootup_thin. Here's what it said in the rvm.io init.d integration section: rvm.io/integration/init-d – Caulk

Ah yes, I probably should have pointed out that my example was based on Ubuntu/Debian, and that paths and command syntax may be different on other systems. – Kassiekassity

Answer 2

One addendum that will hopefully save some time: Ubuntu can do funny things with sudo and environment variables. If regular sudo isn't working, use rvmsudo (in .rvm/bin):

rvmsudo thin install

rvmsudo update-rc.d -f thin defaults

Cologne

Answer 3

A good practice might be to put the application in service instead thin as to be able to start applications in different environments such one app in ruby 1.8.7 myapp1.8.7 and another app in ruby 1.9.2 myapp1.9.2

sudo nano /etc/init.d/myapp1.8.7

KEEP the original loader

DAEMON=/usr/local/rvm/gems/ruby-<rubyversion>-<rubyrevision>@<gemset>/bin/thin

In start case place

$DAEMON -C /etc/thin/$NAME.yml start

and start it up

sudo service myapp1.8.7 start

Does the same thing with app myapp1.9.2 and you will can run many applications independently in mixed environments.

sudo service myapp1.9.2 start

Winchell

Answer 4

for a standalone installation a simple solution, i added the root privileges to the user for 'rvm requirements' and then removed the privileges using visudo username ALL=(ALL:ALL) ALL

https://www.digitalocean.com/community/articles/how-to-add-delete-and-grant-sudo-privileges-to-users-on-a-debian-vps

Your likely then to have the problem with read/write access to /usr/local/rvm

I changed permissions so all users could read/write/execute;

as root 'chomod a+xwr /usr/local/rvm/'

You will get warnings from RVM about all users having read/write/execute access to this folder when updating GEMS

Spare