Rails - Apr 2006 - Coming soon ... a Rails Virtual Applicance

For those of you interested in such things, I am building a VMWare virutal
machine with a complete LAMP stack plus Rails. The project is set up in
Rubyforge at http://rubyforge.org/projects/vgrails/. There''s not much
there
yet, but I expect to have something ready for folks to test towards the 12th of
April, 2006. The project name is "vgrails", which stands for VMWare +
Gentoo +
Rails.

What''s in it?

1. A VMWare virtual machine. It will be distributed as a ZIP archive and will be
posted on the VMWare community virtual appliance site as soon as it''s
done. My
guess is that the ZIP file will be about CD-sized and the unzipped virtual
machine will be about 1.5 GB, but I don''t have all the details yet.

2. Gentoo Linux 2006.0. There will be as much "testing" stuff in it as
I can
get, so I will definitely want people to break it.

3. Apache 2 and fastcgi

4. MySQL, PostgreSQL and SQLite3. I''m not planning to put the PHP-based
web
admin tools in it, but I''m open to advice to the contrary. unixODBC is
definitely in, however.

5. Perl, Python, PHP, Ruby and their Apache modules

6. Subversion, CVS and Trac for version control

7. rrdtool for performance counter logging and analysis

8. Rails. Right now I am expecting Rails 1.1.1 to show up in Gentoo very soon,
which is the only piece I''m waiting for.

9. Numerous Gentoo utilities, including the utility that makes Live install CDs.
I''m holding off on adding a desktop until I see how big everything is
going to
get, but it will probably end up having X and one of the lighter Window
managers, and if I can stuff it in, VNC. If it gets a desktop it will also get
R, since a number of the Ruby folks are interested in R interfaces to Ruby. R
itself is fairly small.

I''m hoping to get it on line as soon as possible, because a few people
have
asked me to put together something like this so they can enter the VMWare
Virtual Appliance challenge with a Rails application. This is not going to be
my entry in the challenge, although everything in it will appear in my entry. I
don''t know at this point if I will even use Rails in my entry, since
I''m not at
all an expert with it yet.

Ed Borasky

Hi Ed ~

I have seen some others working on this, and have set up a Debian VMware
machine myself.  I like the choice of Gentoo as that is what all of my
production servers run.  I would suggest Lighttpd instead of Apache.  It has
a much smaller footprint than Apache.  I bet with some optimization you
could really drop the size of the download as well.  I guess I am really
describing what I would want, vgrails light with only MySQL for a DB. ;)

Anyhow just my 2 cents...

~ Ben

On 4/6/06, znmeb@cesmail.net <znmeb@cesmail.net>
wrote:
>
> For those of you interested in such things, I am building a VMWare virutal
> machine with a complete LAMP stack plus Rails. The project is set up in
> Rubyforge at http://rubyforge.org/projects/vgrails/. There''s not
much
> there
> yet, but I expect to have something ready for folks to test towards the
> 12th of
> April, 2006. The project name is "vgrails", which stands for
VMWare +
> Gentoo +
> Rails.
>
> What''s in it?
>
> 1. A VMWare virtual machine. It will be distributed as a ZIP archive and
> will be
> posted on the VMWare community virtual appliance site as soon as
it''s
> done. My
> guess is that the ZIP file will be about CD-sized and the unzipped virtual
> machine will be about 1.5 GB, but I don''t have all the details
yet.
>
> 2. Gentoo Linux 2006.0. There will be as much "testing" stuff in
it as I
> can
> get, so I will definitely want people to break it.
>
> 3. Apache 2 and fastcgi
>
> 4. MySQL, PostgreSQL and SQLite3. I''m not planning to put the
PHP-based
> web
> admin tools in it, but I''m open to advice to the contrary.
unixODBC is
> definitely in, however.
>
> 5. Perl, Python, PHP, Ruby and their Apache modules
>
> 6. Subversion, CVS and Trac for version control
>
> 7. rrdtool for performance counter logging and analysis
>
> 8. Rails. Right now I am expecting Rails 1.1.1 to show up in Gentoo very
> soon,
> which is the only piece I''m waiting for.
>
> 9. Numerous Gentoo utilities, including the utility that makes Live
> install CDs.
> I''m holding off on adding a desktop until I see how big everything
is
> going to
> get, but it will probably end up having X and one of the lighter Window
> managers, and if I can stuff it in, VNC. If it gets a desktop it will also
> get
> R, since a number of the Ruby folks are interested in R interfaces to
> Ruby. R
> itself is fairly small.
>
> I''m hoping to get it on line as soon as possible, because a few
people
> have
> asked me to put together something like this so they can enter the VMWare
> Virtual Appliance challenge with a Rails application. This is not going to
> be
> my entry in the challenge, although everything in it will appear in my
> entry. I
> don''t know at this point if I will even use Rails in my entry,
since I''m
> not at
> all an expert with it yet.
>
> Ed Borasky
> _______________________________________________
> Rails mailing list
> Rails@lists.rubyonrails.org
> http://lists.rubyonrails.org/mailman/listinfo/rails
>


--
Ben Reubenstein
http://www.benr75.com
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL:
http://wrath.rubyonrails.org/pipermail/rails/attachments/20060407/d040388b/attachment-0001.html

Quoting Ben Reubenstein <benr@x-cr.com>:
> Hi Ed ~
>
> I have seen some others working on this, and have set up a Debian VMware
> machine myself.  I like the choice of Gentoo as that is what all of my
> production servers run.  I would suggest Lighttpd instead of Apache.  It
has
> a much smaller footprint than Apache.  I bet with some optimization you
> could really drop the size of the download as well.  I guess I am really
> describing what I would want, vgrails light with only MySQL for a DB. ;)
>
> Anyhow just my 2 cents...
I forgot about lighttpd ... I''ll add it, but I can''t imagine
dropping Apache.
There may be a non-Rails component or two coming in as well.

Right now the download looks like about 1.5 GB uncompressed and .75 GB
compressed. Once I get everything loaded, I''ll look at the sizes of
things. For
example, I''m pretty much forced to carry Perl and Python, but I
don''t
necessarily need PHP. I think trac requires PHP, so dropping trac might lighten
it up a bit.

I can''t think of a compelling reason for both MySQL and PostgreSQL, but
if one
of them had to go, MySQL is the one I would drop because I have zero experience
with it. For now I think I want them both, even if it means killing some other
sacred cow.