Create and Deploy a Ruby on Rails 4 App with PostgreSQL, Unicorn and Nginx on Ubuntu 14.04

Install the rbenv and Ruby dependencies

sudo apt-get install git-core curl zlib1g-dev build-essential libssl-dev libreadline-dev libyaml-dev libsqlite3-dev sqlite3 libxml2-dev libxslt1-dev libcurl4-openssl-dev python-software-properties libffi-dev

To install rbenv

git clone git://github.com/sstephenson/rbenv.git .rbenv
echo 'export PATH="$HOME/.rbenv/bin:$PATH"' >> ~/.bash_profile
echo 'eval "$(rbenv init -)"' >> ~/.bash_profile

git clone git://github.com/sstephenson/ruby-build.git ~/.rbenv/plugins/ruby-build
echo 'export PATH="$HOME/.rbenv/plugins/ruby-build/bin:$PATH"' >> ~/.bash_profile
source ~/.bash_profile

On Ubuntu Desktop, replace all occurrences .bash_profile in the above code block with .bashrc.

Install Ruby

rbenv install -v 2.2.3

Install the bundler gem

gem install bundler

Install Rails

gem install rails

Install Nodejs

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install nodejs

Install PostgreSQL

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install postgresql postgresql-contrib libpq-dev

Create a PostgreSQL Super User

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install postgresql postgresql-contrib libpq-dev

Set a password

sudo -u postgres psql
postgres=# \password pguser

Create a new Rails app with PostgreSQL

rails new myapp -d postgresql
To use MySQL: rails new myapp -d mysql

Configure Database connection Open config/database.yml and set up your configuration.

  host: localhost
  username: pguser
  password: pguser_password

Create Database

RAILS_ENV=production  rake db:create

Test Configuration

To test that everything is working fine start the rail server and bind it with your public IP

RAILS_ENV=production rails server --binding=server_public_IP

Browse to http://server_public_IP:3000 to see a welcome page.

Set up your project

Copy your project files to the server and run bundle install to install the dependencies

If you get an error related to pg gem, install the following files and run bundle install again.

sudo apt-get install postgresql
sudo apt-get install python-psycopg2
sudo apt-get install libpq-dev

Run migrations

RAILS_ENV=production rake db:migrate

Compile the assets

RAILS_ENV=production rake assets:precompile