My quick setup notes for nginx as a frontend to a mongrel redmine server.

This is intended for situations where redmine needs to be served in a subdirectory via a nginx that is also used for other serving needs.

Some basic prerequisite knowledge of nginx and redmine will likely be needed.

Instructions are tested on redmine-svn and Ubuntu-9.10.

• Install dependencies

  • sudo apt-get install subversion libmysql-ruby rake rubygems mongrel nginx

• Setup directory structure

  • sudo adduser --system --group redmine
    sudo mkdir /opt/redmine
    sudo chown redmine:redmine /opt/redmine
    sudo -Hu redmine svn checkout http://redmine.rubyforge.org/svn/trunk /opt/redmine

• Create the MySQL database for redmine
  • Example for mysql-server on localhost:

    sudo apt-get install mysql-server
    mysql -u root -p
    create user 'redmine'@'localhost' identified by 'password';
    grant all privileges on  `redmine\_%` . * to  'redmine'@'localhost';
    create database redmine_production character set utf8;
    quit;

  • (or use phpmyadmin)
• Copy config/database.yml.example to config/database.yml and edit the database configuration

  • sudo -Hu redmine cp /opt/redmine/config/database.yml.example /opt/redmine/config/database.yml
    sudo -Hu redmine vim /opt/redmine/config/database.yml

  • Example database spec:

    • production:
        adapter: mysql
        database: redmine_production
        host: localhost
        username: redmine
        password: password
        encoding: utf8

• Generate redmine session store secret

  • cd /opt/redmine
    sudo -Hu redmine gem install -v=2.3.5 rails
    sudo -Hu redmine rake generate_session_store

• Create the database structure and insert the default data

  • sudo -Hu redmine RAILS_ENV=production rake db:migrate
    sudo -Hu redmine RAILS_ENV=production rake redmine:load_default_data

• Setup redmine to be served from /redmine/

  • cd /opt/redmine/config
    sudo -Hu redmine cp additional_environment.rb.example additional_environment.rb
    echo 'config.action_controller.relative_url_root = "/redmine"' | sudo -Hu redmine tee -a additional_environment.rb

• Setup email delivery as desired

  • cd /opt/redmine/config
    sudo -Hu redmine cp email.yml.example email.yml

    • Example smtp spec

      • sudo -Hu redmine vim email.yml

        production:
          delivery_method: :smtp
          smtp_settings:
            address: smtp.example.com
            port: 25
            domain: example.com

• Start the mongrel server

  • cd /opt/redmine; sudo -Hu redmine mongrel_rails start -e production -p 9001 -d

• Edit /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default

  • sudo vim /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default

  • Add to the active server section:

    •         location /redmine {
                      alias /opt/redmine/public/;
                      try_files  $uri/index.html $uri.html $uri @mongrel;
              }
              location @mongrel {
                      proxy_set_header  X-Real-IP        $remote_addr;
                      proxy_set_header  X-Forwarded-For  $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
                      proxy_set_header  Host             $http_host;
                      proxy_redirect    off;
                      proxy_pass        http://127.0.0.1:9001;
              }

• Restart nginx:

  sudo service nginx restart

• Test the website. eg: http://localhost/redmine/
• If successful, set mongrel to start on boot

  • sudo vim /etc/rc.local

    • cd /opt/redmine; sudo -Hu redmine mongrel_rails start -e production -p 9001 -d

• Retest site after a reboot

Life Portal 5.2 Systems Development

• Author: Jonas X. Yuan
• Pages: 552
• Publisher: Packt Publishing
• Rating: 9/10
• ISBN: 1847194702
• Summary: A Java developer’s guide to developing custom intranet systems, based on Liferay’s platform

As one of only a few books on advanced Liferay Portal development Jonas had a LOT of material to cover. My two weeks of experience with Liferay up to this point had only involved deployment, configuration and theme development. After been impressed with the results so far my next three aims were customising the WYSIWYG editor with styles more specific to the site, adding layout templates to support quick deployment of content and some custom portals for integrating our other information management systems. A week later with the book and I have the first two knocked over and am on my way with the portals. (more…)