Installing Passenger + Nginx on a Digital Ocean production server
for Node.js apps + Red Hat 7 / CentOS 7 (with RPM)
No Amazon Linux RPMs
Our YUM repository may not be used with Amazon Linux. Amazon Linux is too different from RHEL and CentOS. If you are on Amazon Linux, please go back to the operating system menu and select "Other / OS independent (generic installation method)".
On this page, we will install Passenger. After installing Passenger we can begin with deploying the app.
Table of contents
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Step 1: enable EPEL
The instructions differ depending on whether you are on Red Hat or CentOS. The second step is only necessary on Red Hat.
| Step 1: install EPEL package |
Passenger requires EPEL.
$ sudo yum install -y epel-release yum-utils $ sudo yum-config-manager --enable epel $ sudo yum clean all && sudo yum update -y |
|
Step 2 (RHEL only): enable the 'optional' repository |
Enable the optional repository (rhel-7-server-optional-rpms). This can be done by enabling the RHEL optional subchannel for RHN-Classic. For certificate-based subscriptions see Red Hat Subscription Management Guide.
The following commands may be helpful, but are not thoroughly tested.
$ sudo subscription-manager register --username $RHN_USERNAME --password $RHN_PASSWORD $ POOL=`sudo subscription-manager list --available --all | sed '/^Pool ID:/!d;s/^.*: *//'` $ sudo subscription-manager attach --pool="$POOL" $ sudo subscription-manager repos --enable rhel-7-server-optional-rpms |
Step 2: repair potential system issues
These commands will fix common issues that prevent yum from installing Passenger
# Ensure curl and nss/openssl are sufficiently up-to-date to talk to the repo
sudo yum update -y
date
# if the output of date is wrong, please follow these instructions to install ntp
sudo yum install -y ntp
sudo chkconfig ntpd on
sudo ntpdate pool.ntp.org
sudo service ntpd start
Step 3: install Passenger packages
These commands will install Passenger Nginx through Phusion's YUM repository. If you already had Nginx installed, then these commands will upgrade Nginx to Phusion's version (with Passenger compiled in).
# Install various prerequisites
sudo yum install -y pygpgme curl
# Add our el7 YUM repository
sudo curl --fail -sSLo /etc/yum.repos.d/passenger.repo https://oss-binaries.phusionpassenger.com/yum/definitions/el-passenger.repo
# Install Passenger Nginx
sudo yum install -y nginx passenger || sudo yum-config-manager --enable cr && sudo yum install -y nginx passengerStep 4: enable the Passenger Nginx module and restart Nginx
Edit /etc/nginx/conf.d/passenger.conf and uncomment passenger_root, passenger_ruby and passenger_instance_registry_dir. For example, you may see this:
# passenger_root /some-filename/locations.ini; # passenger_ruby /usr/bin/ruby; # passenger_instance_registry_dir /var/run/passenger-instreg;
Remove the '#' characters, like this:
passenger_root /some-filename/locations.ini; passenger_ruby /usr/bin/ruby; passenger_instance_registry_dir /var/run/passenger-instreg;
If you don't see a commented version of passenger_root or passenger_instance_registry_dir inside passenger.conf, then you need to insert them yourself.
Run passenger-config --root. It will tell output some path. For example:
$ passenger-config --root /some-filename/locations.ini
Insert a passenger_root configuration option into /etc/nginx/conf.d/passenger.conf using the value you obtained. Ensure that passenger_instance_registry_dir is set to /var/run/passenger-instreg. For example:
passenger_root /some-filename/locations.ini;
passenger_instance_registry_dir /var/run/passenger-instreg;
When you are finished with this step, restart Nginx:
$ sudo service nginx restart
Step 5: check installation
After installation, please validate the install by running sudo /usr/bin/passenger-config validate-install. For example:
$ sudo /usr/bin/passenger-config validate-install * Checking whether this Phusion Passenger install is in PATH... ✓ * Checking whether there are no other Phusion Passenger installations... ✓
All checks should pass. If any of the checks do not pass, please follow the suggestions on screen.
Finally, check whether Nginx has started the Passenger core processes. Run sudo /usr/sbin/passenger-memory-stats. You should see Nginx processes as well as Passenger processes. For example:
$ sudo /usr/sbin/passenger-memory-stats Version: 5.0.8 Date : 2015-05-28 08:46:20 +0200 ... ---------- Nginx processes ---------- PID PPID VMSize Private Name ------------------------------------- 12443 4814 60.8 MB 0.2 MB nginx: master process /usr/sbin/nginx 12538 12443 64.9 MB 5.0 MB nginx: worker process ### Processes: 3 ### Total private dirty RSS: 5.56 MB ----- Passenger processes ------ PID VMSize Private Name -------------------------------- 12517 83.2 MB 0.6 MB PassengerAgent watchdog 12520 266.0 MB 3.4 MB PassengerAgent server 12531 149.5 MB 1.4 MB PassengerAgent logger ...
If you do not see any Nginx processes or Passenger processes, then you probably have some kind of installation problem or configuration problem. Please refer to the troubleshooting guide.
Step 6: update regularly
Nginx updates, Passenger updates and system updates are delivered through the YUM package manager regularly. You should run the following command regularly to keep them up to date:
$ sudo yum update
After an update, you should restart Nginx. Doing so will automatically restart Passenger too.
Next step
Now that you have installed Passenger, you are ready to deploy your Node.js application on the production server!