RVM and thin, root vs. local user

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-datagroup: www-data

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

# port: 3000socket: 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>

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 installrvmsudo update-rc.d -f thin defaults

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