Let’s start by installing Ruby and all tools:

# apt-get install build-essential
# apt-get install ruby irb ri rdoc libopenssl-ruby ruby1.8-dev
# ruby -v
# cd /usr/local/src
# wget http://rubyforge.org/frs/download.php/60718/rubygems-1.3.5.tgz # replace with latest version of rubygems
# tar xfvz rubygems-1.3.5.tgz
# cd rubygems-1.3.5
# ruby setup.rb
# ln -s /usr/bin/gem1.8 /usr/bin/gem
# gem -v
# gem install gemcutter
# gem tumble
# apt-get install mysql-server # this will ask for a password during installation
# apt-get install libmysqlclient15-dev
# gem install mysql
# gem install rails
# apt-get install git-core
# apt-get install apache2
# gem install passenger
# passenger-install-apache2-module

Copy the following lines from the output and paste them at the end of the file /etc/apache2/apache2.conf. They should look something like this:

LoadModule passenger_module /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/passenger-2.2.7/ext/apache2/mod_passenger.so
PassengerRoot /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/passenger-2.2.7
PassengerRuby /usr/bin/ruby1.8

Finally let’s restart apache2:

/etc/init.d/apache2 restart

Phew! That's it... We now have all the software we need on the server that's required to deploy your Ruby on Rails app on Debian Linux (Lenny)!

In a future article I'll cover the basics of deployment using Capistrano.