Installing Passenger Enterprise + Standalone on a Digital Ocean production server
for Node.js apps + Red Hat 7 / CentOS 7 (with RPM)

This page describes the installation of Passenger through the following operating system or installation method: Red Hat 7 / CentOS 7 (with RPM). Not the configuration you are looking for? Go back to the operating system / installation method selection menu.

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

Step 1: download and install your license key

Before you can install Passenger Enterprise, you need to download and install your license key. This is a regular file that you need to copy to your production server.

Please login to the Passenger Enterprise Customer Area.

Click on the Install button in the Customer Area.

Click on the button to download the license key.

License key download button in the Customer Area

The license key will be downloaded to your local computer. Copy this license key file to your production server, for example using scp:

local-computer$ cd /path-to-your-local-computer-download-folder
local-computer$ scp passenger-enterprise-license adminuser@yourserver.com:

Replace adminuser with the name of an account with administrator privileges or sudo privileges.

Finally, login to your production server and save the file as /etc/passenger-enterprise-license:

local-computer$ ssh adminuser@yourserver.com
production-server$ sudo mv passenger-enterprise-license /etc/passenger-enterprise-license
production-server$ chmod 644 /etc/passenger-enterprise-license
production-server$ /sbin/restorecon /etc/passenger-enterprise-license # this command fixes the file's SELinux context.

Step 2: obtain your download token

Your download token is needed in order to install Passenger Enterprise. In the Customer Area, find your download token and copy it to your clipboard.

Exhibit of the download token in the Customer Area

From this point on, all commands that you run are supposed to be run on the production server, not on your local computer.

Step 3: 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 4: 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 5: install Passenger packages

These commands will install Passenger Enterprise through Phusion's YUM repository. Replace YOUR_DOWNLOAD_TOKEN with the download token you obtained earlier.

# Install various prerequisites
sudo yum install -y pygpgme curl

# Add our el7 YUM repository
unset HISTFILE
sudo curl --fail -sSL -u download:YOUR_DOWNLOAD_TOKEN -o /etc/yum.repos.d/passenger.repo https://www.phusionpassenger.com/enterprise_yum/el-passenger-enterprise.repo
sudo chown root: /etc/yum.repos.d/passenger.repo
sudo chmod 600 /etc/yum.repos.d/passenger.repo

# Install Passenger Enterprise
sudo yum install -y passenger-enterprise || sudo yum-config-manager --enable cr && sudo yum install -y passenger-enterprise

Step 6: 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.

Step 7: update regularly

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 all your Passenger instances so that the updates take effect.

Next step

Now that you have installed Passenger, you are ready to deploy your Node.js application on the production server!

Continue: Deploy app »

Installing Passenger Enterprise + Standalone on a Digital Ocean production server for Node.js apps + Red Hat 7 / CentOS 7 (with RPM)