Installing Passenger + Apache on a Digital Ocean production server
for Ruby apps + generic installation through RubyGems (with RVM)

This page describes the installation of Passenger through the following operating system or installation method: generic installation through RubyGems (with RVM). Not the configuration you are looking for? Go back to the operating system / installation method selection menu.

On this page, we will install Passenger. After installing Passenger we can begin with deploying the app.

Table of contents

Installation

Step 1: install gem

Install the Passenger gem with:

$ gem install passenger --no-rdoc --no-ri

The --no-rdoc --no-ri argument isn't really necessary, but it makes installation faster by skipping generation of API documentation.

Did gem install abort with a "permission denied" error? Then re-run it with rvmsudo.

Since you are using RVM, don't use sudo! Always use rvmsudo instead when executing Ruby-related commands! Learn more about rvmsudo at the RVM website.

Step 2: run the Passenger Apache module installer

Run the Passenger Apache module installer and follow the on-screen instructions:

passenger-install-apache2-module

At the end of the installation process, you will be asked to copy and paste a configuration snippet (containing LoadModule, PassengerRoot, etc.) into your Apache configuration file.

Different operating systems and Apache installations have different conventions with regard to where the Apache configuration file is and how it is organized. Please read Working with the Apache configuration file if you are not familiar with it. That page is especially of interest for macOS Server >= 10.8 users because the configuration file may be at a surprising location.

Step 3: validate installation

After installation, please validate the install by running rvmsudo passenger-config validate-install. For example:

$ rvmsudo 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 Apache has started the Passenger core processes. Run rvmsudo passenger-memory-stats. You should see Apache processes as well as Passenger processes. For example:

$ rvmsudo passenger-memory-stats
Version: 5.0.8
Date   : 2015-05-28 08:46:20 +0200

---------- Apache processes ----------
PID    PPID   VMSize    Private  Name
--------------------------------------
3918   1      190.1 MB  0.1 MB   /usr/sbin/apache2
...

----- Passenger processes ------
PID    VMSize    Private   Name
--------------------------------
12517  83.2 MB   0.6 MB    Passenger watchdog
12520  266.0 MB  3.4 MB    Passenger core
12531  149.5 MB  1.4 MB    Passenger ust-router
...

If you do not see any Apache processes or Passenger processes, then you probably have some kind of installation problem or configuration problem. Please refer to the troubleshooting guide.

FAQ

I have multiple Ruby versions or gemsets. Does it matter which one I use to install Passenger with?

Not really. Passenger doesn't care which Ruby you used to install it; it can still serve Ruby apps with any Ruby version, as long as you tell Passenger which Ruby interpreter you want to use.

You tell Passenger which Ruby interpreter to use for a specific app, by using the PassengerRuby directive. This can be customized on a per-application basis.

Please also read How having multiple Ruby interpreters affects Passenger. In particular, read the RVM-related caveats.

Some of the dependent libraries are installed in non-standard locations. How do I allow the compiler to find them?

Please refer to Customizing the compilation process.

How do I pass additional flags to the compiler?