This script sets up a Rails server stack on Slicehost, running Ubuntu Inprepid

Includes updated gems, ImageMagick, and setup configs as specified in Slicehost articles for Ubuntu Intrepid

• Ubuntu Development Tools
• Git
• Apache
• Passenger
• MySQL
• Ruby 1.8.6
• Rubygems 1.3.1
• Rails 2.3.2
• IMageMagick

The following gems are installed:

• radiant
• flickr_fu
• haml
• mislav-will_paginate
• fastercsv
• RedCloth
• rmagick
• xml-magic
• json
• thoughtbot-paperclip

Also configures Apache for use with Passenger, as well setting up a vhost container for the rails app.
For more details, checkout config/deploy.rb

• Slicehost slice running Ubuntu Intrepid
• Basic slice setup, http://articles.slicehost.com/2008/11/28/ubuntu-intrepid-setup-page-1
• Recommended that you upgrade the system before starting:

  sudo aptitude safe-upgrade
  sudo aptitude full-upgrade

You should only need to modify the variables at the top of the deploy recipe in config/deploy.rb

  set :application, "mydomain.com" # The vhost container name (e.g. domain)
  set :repository,  "[email protected]:USERNAME/REPONAME.git" # GitHub repo where this deploy lives
  set :user, "username" # Username of your slice
  set :slice, "xx.xx.xx.xx" # The IP address of your slice

The two lines below probably only need to be used if you are also deploying your app from this same recipe
I only use this recipe for setting up my server, and is not contained in the app’s repo itself

  set :repository,  "[email protected]:USERNAME/REPONAME.git"
  set :deploy_to, "/home/#{user}/#{application}"

You can, of course, use this recipe as the primary deploy.rb, where all your cap commands access the declared namespaces. This would allow you to setup the recipe on a per project basis.

As an alternative, you can place this recipe in your app alongside the dev, staging, and production recipes using the capistrano-ext gem, which would allow you to issue cap commands on a per environment basis. In this case, you could name this recipe slicehost.rb. Be sure to declare this recipe in the top-level deploy.rb file.

To run the recipe in it’s entirety, issue the command cap slicehost:setup_env.

To see all the available commands, issue the command cap -T.

Credit to Matt Swasey of Viget Labs for the idea, based on his blog entry
http://www.viget.com/extend/building-an-environment-from-scratch-with-capistrano-2

Copyright © 2009 Brandon Calloway, released under the MIT License