Redmine 0.8 on Dreamhost
For those who are trying to get Redmine to work on Dreamhost using Passenger, check out these notes.I had lots of problems mostly because 1) of reading too much outdated information, 2) reading wrong information too, so… the simple way is:
Start from a clean base install…
1. Cleaning up the house: 1.1 Remove all stuff related with gems on you home directory $ cd ~ ; rm -rf .gem* 1.2 Remove all GEM_PATH's in your .bash_profile (there are many howtos with inconsistent information about this) (after removing, reload it) $ source .bash_profile 2. Install Rails 2.1.2 because Redmine 0.8 needs it $ gem install rails -v=2.1.2 3. Check its installetion $ gem list --local | grep 'rails' rails (2.2.2, 2.1.2, 2.1.1, 2.1.0, 2.0.2)
Ok, now lets continue…
(quoting original post: Dreamhost howto)
1. From the Dreamhost control panel, create a new subdomain for the application such as yoursubdomain.yourdomain.com
1. Make sure the domain supports “Ruby on Rails Passenger (mod_rails)?”
2. Specify your web directory: /home/username/yoursubdomain.yourdomain.com/public
* you must add the public!!!
2. From the Dreamhost control panel create a new MySQL database named yourdatabasename
3. ssh into your Dreamhost account
4. cd ~/yoursubdomain.yourdomain.com
5. svn export --force svn://rubyforge.org/var/svn/redmine/branches/0.8-stable ./
* check http://www.redmine.org/wiki/redmine/Download for the latest version
6. also watch out for permissions
* chmod -v -R 755 ./*
7. cd ~/yoursubdomain.yourdomain.com/config
8. cp database.yml.example database.yml
9. nano database.yml
1. edit the database.yml config file with the appropriate info. Should be similar to the following
production:
adapter: mysql
database: yourdatabasename
username: yourusername
password: yourpassword
host: mysql.yourdomain.com
10. cd ~/yoursubdomain.yourdomain.com/public
11. cp dispatch.rb.example dispatch.rb
12. nano .htaccess (replace with following text)
Options +FollowSymLinks +ExecCGI
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^$ index.html [QSA]
RewriteRule ^([^.]+)$ $1.html [QSA]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
ErrorDocument 500 "H2Application errorH2 Rails application failed to start properly"
* replace the H2 with the proper HTML tag when you place it in the .htaccess
12. for now just remove .htaccess to get it working, then you can play with it at the end.
$ mv public/.htaccess public/.htaccess_off
13. cd ~/yoursubdomain.yourdomain.com
13.1 Some chamges in environment.rb
$ vi config/environment.rb
13.2 Uncomment this line
ENV['RAILS_ENV'] ||= 'production'
13.3 and take attention to this one, we do want this version!
RAILS_GEM_VERSION = '2.1.2' unless defined? RAILS_GEM_VERSION
13.4 now lets point it to use our gem_path on our local gem directory
ENV["GEM_PATH"]="/home/<YOUR USERNAME>/.gem:/usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8"
(Attention to .gem agains .gems directory from other tutorials.
with a fresh clean install, rubygem install everything on .gem by default, so lets KISS)
13.5 PStore error? Change this:
# config.action_controller.session_store = 
Store
config.action_controller.session = {
:session_key => "_myapp_session",
:secret => "some secret phrase of at least 30 characters"
}
13.6 and finally freeze the app
$ rake rails:freeze:edge TAG=rel_2-1-2
14. from application root type
* rake db:migrate RAILS_ENV="production"
15. also type the following to load config defaults
* rake redmine:load_default_data RAILS_ENV="production"
* choose "en" for english
16. Before pointint your browser to http://yoursubdomain.yourdomain.com
you must RESTART your application. Some tutorials are wrong telling your to REBOOT the app.
$ echo `date`>> tmp/restart.txt ; cat tmp/restart.txt
16. browse to http://yoursubdomain.yourdomain.com
I hope this can help you! Drop me a post if you have some suggestions… I need them too 
(reading a book every month).