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With Google’s recent announcement regarding the importance of performance and page load time to its ranking algorithm there are some compelling reasons for online UK businesses to switch to a UK VPS offering. All VirtuaHost VPS servers are served from powerful host machines hosted in Maidenhead, just outside of London.

With a server located in the UK not only will your customers receive the best performance possible within their geographical location but it has also been shown from Google’s analysis of page load time that this is often a subtle yet very important factor to decisions consumers make when purchasing on the web.

If you are a online UK business with a UK consumer base then why not ask us about our UK VPS offering today?

Why a UK VPS is important for UK businesses is a post from: VirtuaHost

Want a CentOS VPS server to get your very own Ruby on Rails installation running? Why not sign-up to our CentOS VPS packages today?

Installing Ruby on Rails on CentOS Video Tutorial

Like to see how quick you can install Ruby on Rails on your CentOS installation?
View video tutorial

Getting started

To get started, you will need to grab a copy of PuTTY and have a fresh/clean installation of CentOS 5.x. This guide does not provide information on how to use PuTTY, so please consult the documentation available on the PuTTY site for how to configure and connect to your server through SSH.

Prerequisites

1. A fresh installation of CentOS 5.x with SSH enabled
2. Working installation of yum on your CentOS 5.x machine
3. Working installation of PuTTY on your local machine

Let’s get our environment ready first.

[root@test ~]# yum install httpd-devel openssl-devel zlib-devel gcc gcc-c++ curl-devel expat-devel gettext-devel mysql-server mysql-devel -y

You should see YUM go through lots of steps and finally a message indicating the installation was a success.

Installing Ruby 1.8

The next step is to install Ruby 1.8 to our server. We will download Ruby 1.8 from the ruby-lang.org FTP server using CURL, extract the archive, configure the make installer and finally install Ruby 1.8.

[root@test ~]# cd /usr/local/src
[root@test src]# curl -O ftp://ftp.ruby-lang.org/pub/ruby/1.8/ruby-1.8.7-p174.tar.gz
[root@test src]# tar zxvf ruby-1.8.7-p174.tar.gz   
[root@test src]# cd ruby-*
[root@test ruby-1.8.7-p174]# ./configure --enable-shared --enable-pthread
[root@test ruby-1.8.7-p174]# make
[root@test ruby-1.8.7-p174]# make install
[root@test ruby-1.8.7-p174]# cd ext/zlib/
[root@test zlib]# ruby extconf.rb --with-zlib-include=/usr/include --with-zlib-lib=/usr/lib
[root@test zlib]# cd ../../
[root@test ruby-1.8.7-p174]# make
[root@test ruby-1.8.7-p174]# make install
[root@test ruby-1.8.7-p174]# ruby -v
ruby 1.8.7 (2009-06-12 patchlevel 174) [i686-linux]

Installing RubyGems

The next step is to grab the latest version of RubyGems from http://rubyforge.org/projects/rubygems and install it.

[root@test ~]# mkdir ~/sources
[root@test ~]# cd ~/sources
[root@test sources]# wget http://rubyforge.org/frs/download.php/74886/rubygems-1.8.3.tgz
[root@test sources]# tar xzvf rubygems-*.tgz
[root@test sources]# cd rubygems-*
[root@test rubygems-1.4.2]# ruby setup.rb
RubyGems 1.4.2 installed
[root@test rubygems-1.4.2]# rm -rf ../rubygems-*.tgz

Installing Sqlite

Unfortunately the YUM repository for CentOS 5 contains and older version of Sqlite 3 which is not compatible (by default) with the RubyGems gem for Sqlite 3. To overcome this simply download the latest amalgamation file from sqlite.org and install by following the steps below:

cd /opt/local
wget http://www.sqlite.org/sqlite-amalgamation-3.7.0.1.tar.gz
tar xvzf sqlite-amalgamation-3.7.0.1.tar.gz
cd sqlite-3.7.0.1
./configure --prefix=/opt/local/sqlite-3.7.0.1
make
make install
gem install sqlite3-ruby -- --with-sqlite3-dir=/opt/local/sqlite-3.7.0.1

Updating RubyGems & installing MySQL, Rails and Passenger

To complete our Ruby on Rails installation we will need to first check if RubyGems has any updates available to the system (RubyGems itself) and to any Gems that may have already been installed.

[root@test rubygems-1.4.2]# gem update --system
Updating RubyGems
Nothing to update
[root@test rubygems-1.4.2]# gem update

Now that we are confident that our RubyGems installation is fully up-to-date we will now proceed with installing the MySQL, Rails, Passenger and Sinatra gems. Passenger makes the deployment of Ruby on Rails applications a breeze with Apache.

[root@test rubygems-1.4.2]# gem install mysql -- --with-mysql-config=/usr/bin/mysql_config 
[root@test rubygems-1.4.2]# gem install rails passenger sinatra

Configuring Passenger for Apache 2

To configure Passenger to work with Apache 2, simply execute the following command and follow the on-screen instructions:

[root@test rubygems-1.4.2]# passenger-install-apache2-module

Configuring Apache for Passenger

As mentioned in the final step of the Passenger installation for Apache 2 you need to make some changes to your Apache configuration. To do this simply open the httpd.conf file in your favourite text editor:

[root@test rubygems-1.4.2]# nano /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf

Add the following LoadModule, and passenger specific entries to your httpd.conf file:

LoadModule passenger_module /usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/passenger-3.0.7/ext/apache2/mod_passenger.so
PassengerRoot /usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/passenger-3.0.7
PassengerRuby /usr/local/bin/ruby

Finally, we add an Apache Virtual Host entry with reference to our first Ruby on Rails application to our httpd.conf file:

<virtualhost *:80>
    ServerName foo.com
    ServerAlias www.foo.com
    DocumentRoot /apps/foo/public
    <directory /apps/foo/public>
        AllowOverride all
        Options -MultiViews
    </directory>
</virtualhost>

Creating our first Ruby on Rails application

In this tutorial we will create a Ruby on Rails application called foo. We will now create the directory structure as we created for our Virtual Host entry:

[root@test /]# mkdir /apps
[root@test /]# mkdir /apps/foo
[root@test /]# cd /apps/foo

With our directory structure in place we will execute the rails command to create the skeleton of our new Ruby on Rails application:

[root@test foo]# rails new foo

One last (but important step) is to ensure that the apache deamon has permission (recursively) to all objects without our ‘foo’ Ruby on Rails application:

[root@test foo]# chown -R apache.apache *

Finally, we restart Apache:

[root@test rubygems-1.4.2]# service httpd restart
Stopping httpd:                                            [  OK  ]
Starting httpd:                                            [  OK  ]

And to check that everything is on order, we visit foo.com in our browser and hey presto, we are presented with the Ruby on Rails ‘Welcome aboard’ message:

Want a CentOS VPS server to get your very own Ruby on Rails installation running? Why not sign-up to our CentOS VPS packages today?

Installing Ruby on Rails on CentOS is a post from: VirtuaHost

Want a CentOS VPS server to get your very own Subversion source control setup? Why not sign-up to our CentOS VPS packages today?

Getting started

To get started, you will need to grab a copy of PuTTY and have a fresh/clean installation of CentOS 5.x. This guide does not provide information on how to use PuTTY, so please consult the documentation available on the PuTTY site for how to configure and connect to your server through SSH.

Prerequisites

1. A fresh installation of CentOS 5.x with SSH enabled
2. Working installation of yum on your CentOS 5.x machine
3. Working installation of PuTTY on your local machine

First we will need to make sure our yum packages are all up to date:

[root@test ~]# yum update

Installing Apache

The next step is to install the Apache web server. YUM provides an easy means of installing Apache quickly and without requiring a lot of configuration changes and is a great way to get a basic installation on your CentOS VPS server.

So let’s get started and install Apache:

[root@test ~]# yum install httpd httpd-devel -y

You should see YUM go through lots of steps and finally a message indicating the installation was a success.

Now that Apache has been successfully installed we need to start up the service:

[root@test ~]# service httpd start
Starting httpd:                                            [  OK  ]

Now we’ll head over to our site to check that Apache is up and running and serving the default CentOS 5.x Apache test page.

You can do this by visiting http://[ipaddress], replacing [ipaddress] with the main IP address of your server. You should be presented with a default CentOS Apache welcome screen, similar to below:

Ok, so it looks as though Apache is up and running on our server so back to our SSH terminal (via PuTTY) to install nano, a text editor that’s easy to use (compared to VI).

Installing Nano

Although not necessarily required to get your Subversion server up and running, Nano is a great text editor to have handy on your CentOS server; Nano is actually a derivative of Pico – and provides an easy to use (slightly more visual) means of editing files.

So let’s get started and install via YUM package manager:

[root@test ~]# yum install nano -y

That’s it! You should then see a message indicating whether the installation was a success or not.

We’ve now successfuly prepared our environment for installation of Subversion onto our CentOS installation. To quickly recap we have performmed the following:

1. Installed Apache web server
2. Verified Apache web server is working by visited test page
3. Installed nano text editor for easy editting

Installing Subversion

Thanks to the yum package manager installing Subversion is relatively straight forward. Execute the following command to kick off the installation:

[root@test ~]# yum install mod_dav_svn subversion -y

Now we’ll open up the Apache configuration file, and we should at least change the ServerName directive. To open the configuration file (httpd.conf) enter the following:

[root@test ~]# nano /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf

When you’re happy with the file, simply restart Apache to pick up any configuration changes made:

[root@test ~]# service httpd restart

And finally execute the following command to ensure Apache always starts when the machine is rebooted:

[root@test ~]# chkconfig httpd on

Configuring Apache to work with Subversion

Now that we have both Apache configured and Subversion installed, let’s make the two systems work in harmony. To do this, we’ll need to create a Subversion specific configuraiton file under our Apache custom configuration folder.

Firstly we’ll need to change to the Apache custom configuration folder:

[root@test /]# cd /etc/httpd/conf.d/

And now we will create a file called subversion.conf:

[root@test conf.d]# nano subversion.conf

And paste the following text within this file:

LoadModule dav_svn_module     modules/mod_dav_svn.so
LoadModule authz_svn_module   modules/mod_authz_svn.so
 
   DAV svn
   SVNListParentPath on
   SVNParentPath /var/www/svn/repos
   AuthType Basic
   AuthName "Subversion"
   AuthUserFile /etc/svn-auth-conf
   Require valid-user

Now we have configured our Subversion specific configuration for Apache, we now need to create our password files to secure our Subversion repositories that are exposed to the web.

Run the following command, and follow the on-screen instructions; feel free to change svnuser to a user that makes sense to you.

[root@test conf.d]# htpasswd -cm /etc/svn-auth-conf svnuser
New password:
Re-type new password:
Adding password for user svnuser

The next step is to create our new Subversion repository folder, as per the configuration file we saved earlier (SVNParentPath /var/www/svn/repos). Execute the following commands to create this new folder:

[root@test /]# cd /var/www
[root@test www]# mkdir svn
[root@test www]# cd svn

We’ll need to use the svnadmin command (part of Subversion) to create our repos base folder (as per our SVNParentPath):

[root@test svn]# svnadmin create repos

Now lets give apache permissions (recursively) to all files/folders under the repos folder:

[root@test svn]# chown -R apache.apache repos

Now that we’re done with configuring Apache, let’s restart apache to pick up all of our changes:

[root@test svn]# service httpd restart
Stopping httpd:                                            [  OK  ]
Starting httpd:                                            [  OK  ]

Finally if you navigate to http://[ipaddress]/repos (replacing [ipaddress] with the main IP address of your server) you should be presented with a password authentication challenge. Enter the username svnuser along with the password you configured for your user and you should be presented with a list of folders entitled, “Collection of repositories”.

Creating our first project repository

We will now create our own project within our repository:

[root@test svn]# cd repos
[root@test repos]# svnadmin create myproject

The following files/folders are created when we create our new project folder:

drwxr-xr-x 7 root root 4096 Jan 16 02:15 .
drwxr-xr-x 4 root root 4096 Jan 16 02:15 ..
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Jan 16 02:15 conf
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Jan 16 02:15 dav
drwxr-sr-x 5 root root 4096 Jan 16 02:15 db
-r--r--r-- 1 root root    2 Jan 16 02:15 format
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Jan 16 02:15 hooks
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Jan 16 02:15 locks
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  229 Jan 16 02:15 README.txt

Edit the new repository’s svnserve.conf file:

[root@test myproject]# nano /var/www/svn/repos/myproject/conf/svnserve.conf

And paste the following text into this file:

[general]
auth-access = write
password-db = /etc/svn-auth-conf
realm = My Project

Now we need to tell the Subversion daemon to serve all repositories (recursively) under our repository collection base path:

[root@test myproject]# svnserve -d -r /var/www/svn/repos

And hey presto! We have our very own Subversion project repository. Simply navigate to http://[ipaddress]/repos/myproject (replacing [ipaddress] with the main IP address of your server) and you will be presented with a password auth challenge. Enter the username svnuser along with the password you configured for your user and you should be presented with a list of folders.

Want a CentOS VPS server to get your very own Subversion source control setup? Why not sign-up to our CentOS VPS packages today?

Installing subversion on CentOS is a post from: VirtuaHost

Getting started

We first need to do some prep work for our YUM package manager to enable the RPMforge repository (which is needed for PHPMyAdmin).

Find out which architecture we are using:

[root@test ~]# uname -i
i386

i386 means you are running a 32-bit installation of CentOS, x86_64 means you are running a 64-bit installation of CentOS.

Now let’s download the latest RPMforge package. You can find the latest RPMforge rpm download from the CentOS Wiki.

[root@test ~]# mkdir ~/downloads
[root@test ~]# cd ~/downloads
[root@test downloads]# wget http://packages.sw.be/rpmforge-release/rpmforge-release-0.5.2-2.el5.rf.[ARCH].rpm

Replacing [ARCH] with either i386 or x86_64 – depending on your installation.

Now we need to install RPMforge using rpm:

[root@test downloads]# rpm -ivh rpmforge-release-0.5.2-2.el5.rf.*.rpm

And now clean-up the RPM file:

[root@test downloads]# rm -rf rpmforge-release-0.5.2-2.el5.rf.*.rpm

Installing Apache

The next step is to install the Apache web server. YUM provides an easy means of installing Apache quickly and without requiring a lot of configuration changes and is a great way to get a basic installation on your CentOS VPS server.

So let’s get started and install Apache:

[root@test ~]# yum install httpd httpd-devel -y

You should see YUM go through lots of steps and finally a message indicating the installation was a success.

Now that apache has been successfully installed we need to start up the service:

[root@test ~]# service httpd start
Starting httpd:                                            [  OK  ]

Now we’ll head over to our site to check that apache is up and running and serving the default CentOS 5.x apache test page.

You can do this by visiting http://[ipaddress], replacing [ipaddress] with the main IP address of your server. You should be presented with a default CentOS Apache welcome screen, similar to below:

Ok, so it looks as though apache is up and running on our server so back to our SSH terminal (via PuTTY) to install nano, a text editor that’s easy to use (compared to VI).

Installing Nano

Although not necessarily required to get your LAMP server up and running, Nano is a great text editor to have handy on your CentOS server; Nano is actually a derivative of Pico – and provides an easy to use (slightly more visual) means of editing files.

So let’s get started and install via YUM package manager:

[root@test ~]# yum install nano -y

That’s it! You should then see a message indicating whether the installation was a success or not.

Installing MySQL Database Server

MySQL is the world’s most popular open source database that is supported by a community of open source developers and enthusiasts. With close integration with PHP and Ruby on Rails development stacks, it is a must for web server.

We’ll be installing MySQL server via the YUM package manager and it couldn’t be easier than just one line:

[root@test ~]# yum install mysql mysql-server mysql-devel -y

We’ll then get MySQL started up:

[root@test ~]# service mysqld start
Starting MySQL:                                            [  OK  ]

Ok, all is looking good so now we will connect to our MySQL server and set our root (admin) password:

[root@test ~]# mysql
Welcome to the MySQL monitor.  Commands end with ; or \g.
Your MySQL connection id is 3
Server version: 5.0.77 Source distribution
 
Type 'help;' or '\h' for help. Type '\c' to clear the buffer.
 
mysql> use mysql
Reading table information for completion of table and column names
You can turn off this feature to get a quicker startup with -A
 
Database changed
mysql> UPDATE user SET Password=PASSWORD('newpassword') WHERE user='root';
Query OK, 3 rows affected (0.00 sec)
Rows matched: 3  Changed: 3  Warnings: 0
 
mysql> FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)
 
mysql> quit
Bye

Replace ‘newpassword’ with the actual password you wish to use. Be sure to use a strong password (combination of alpha-numeric and UPPER and lower case) to make your installation more secure.

Now let’s re-connect to our MySQL server using our new root password:

[root@test ~]# mysql -u root -p
Enter password:
Welcome to the MySQL monitor.  Commands end with ; or \g.
Your MySQL connection id is 4
Server version: 5.0.77 Source distribution
 
Type 'help;' or '\h' for help. Type '\c' to clear the buffer.
 
mysql> quit
Bye

Congratulations, you now have a working installation of MySQL server and have configured your root account with a secure password.

Installing PHP

We will install PHP via the YUM package manager but we will also include the MySQL module, along with some common PHP modules which most installations use:

[root@test ~]# yum install php php-mysql php-common php-gd php-mbstring php-mcrypt php-devel php-xml -y

Now that PHP and all of the modules have installed, we will restart the Apache web server so that it picks up the PHP installation:

[root@test ~]# service httpd restart
Stopping httpd:                                            [  OK  ]
Starting httpd:                                            [  OK  ]

We will now create a PHP information (PHP Info) page to test our installation of PHP:

[root@test /]# nano /var/www/html/phpinfo.php

And enter the text, below:

<?php
        phpinfo();
?>

To save, press the CTRL + X key and then press the Y key to save the file. We will now verify our PHP installation by visiting http://[ipaddress]/phpinfo.php. Replacing [ipaddress] with the main IP address of your server.

If your installation was successful, you you created your phpinfo.php file correctly, you should see a screen similar to below:

Now we’re happy with our installation of PHP, we’ll proceed with removing our phpinfo.php file (security through obscurity):

[root@test /]# rm -rf /var/www/html/phpinfo.php

Installing PHPMyAdmin

phpMyAdmin is a free open source project that handles administration of MySQL servers and databases over the web. It supports operations such as managing database, tables, fields, relations, indexes, users, permissions and much more. You can still execute SQL statements if you wish, with the convenience of a web interface.

Thanks to our RPMForge repository, we can install PHPMyAdmin directly through the YUM package manager:

[root@test ~]# yum install phpmyadmin

Now that PHPMyAdmin is installed, let’s configure the Apache configuration file so that it is visible from the web:

[root@test ~]# nano /etc/httpd/conf.d/phpmyadmin.conf

Comment out Deny from all line (the # symbol denotes a comment), see below:

#
#  Web application to manage MySQL
#
 
  Order Deny,Allow
#  Deny from all
  Allow from 127.0.0.1
 
Alias /phpmyadmin /usr/share/phpmyadmin
Alias /phpMyAdmin /usr/share/phpmyadmin
Alias /mysqladmin /usr/share/phpmyadmin

To save the changes made, press CTRL + X on your keyboard, followed by the Y key to confirm changes.

Finally, we need to make some configuration updates for cookie based authentication to work:

[root@test ~]# nano /usr/share/phpmyadmin/config.inc.php

Find the line $cfg['blowfish_secret'] and replace the value:

$cfg['blowfish_secret'] = ''; /* YOU MUST FILL IN THIS FOR
COOKIE AUTH! */

Now that we’re done configuring PHPMyAdmin, we need to restart Apache to pick up the changes:

[root@test ~]# service httpd restart
Stopping httpd:                                            [  OK  ]
Starting httpd:                                            [  OK  ]

Navigate to http://[ipaddress]/phpmyadmin, replacing [ipaddress] with the main IP address of your server. You should be produced with the PHPMyAdmin login screen (see below):

To test your installation works, simply enter the username ‘root’ (without quotes) and your root password (as set on your MySQL installation). You should then see the PHPMyAdmin home screen (see below):

Congratulations – you now have a complete LAMP set-up on your CentOS VPS server. In the next step we will go through the process of installing Webmin, which is a great web user interface for administering your server. This step is optional, but recommended for those who wish to control most aspects of their server over the web.

Installing Webmin

Webmin provides a web-based user interface for system administration for Linux/Unix machines. Using your web browser you can control the setup of new user accounts, configuration of Apache and DNS servers, file sharing and much more. Webmin is great for those who don’t know how to manually configure certain services of configuration files, and lets you manage a system from the console or remotely with ease.

So to get started, we will need to download the latest RPM of Webmin. You can find the latest download by visiting http://www.webmin.com/index.html.

[root@test ~]# cd /root/downloads
[root@test downloads]# wget http://sourceforge.net/projects/webadmin/files/webmin/1.530/webmin-1.530-1.noarch.rpm/download

Now that we have downloaded the RPM file, we need to run the installation:

[root@test downloads]# rpm -ivh webmin-*.rpm
warning: webmin-1.530-1.noarch.rpm: Header V3 DSA signature: NOKEY, key ID 11f63c51
Preparing...                ########################################### [100%]
Operating system is CentOS Linux
   1:webmin                 ########################################### [100%]
Webmin install complete. You can now login to http://test:10000/
as root with your root password.

As the installation output reveals, you need to visit http://test:10000/ through your web browser to access Webmin. Remember to replace test with your machines IP address. You should then see a Webmin login screen (see below):

To login to Webmin, enter the user name ’root’ (without quotes) along with your root password (for console, not MySQL root password). You should then be redirected to the Webmin administration homepage (see below):

Now to quickly switch back to our SSH terminal, and do some clean-up:

[root@test downloads]# rm -rf webmin-*.rpm

We’re all done! We now have a working installation of Webmin so we can easily administer our CentOS VPS server from the web.

Final steps

Finally, to finish off this tutorial we need to ensure that Apache and MySQL server automatically start each time our server reboots or is booted back up. To do this, simply execute the two commands below:

[root@test downloads]# chkconfig httpd on
[root@test downloads]# chkconfig mysqld on

Installing LAMP on a VPS server is a post from: VirtuaHost

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VirtuaHost UK VPS Service Launches is a post from: VirtuaHost