Rails%203%20In%20Action

388 CHAPTER 14 Deployment
useradd -d /home/user -m -s /bin/bash -G admin user
This command will create a directory at /home/user and set this user’s home path to
that directory. This is done with the -m and -d options, respectively. Next, the command
sets the user’s shell to /bin/bash—which is the default shell of UNIX operating
systems—using the -s option. Near the end of this command, the -G option specifies
that this user will be a part of the admin group, which will let the user execute commands
using sudo, a kind of super-user command. This part is important because
you’ll need these permissions to set up your server. At the end of the command, specify
the username of this new user.
Next, you need to set a password for this user, which you can do with this
command:
passwd user
You need to enter the new password for this user twice, and then you’re done. You
mustn’t forget the password, otherwise you’ll have to reset it as the root user.
With that done, let’s switch into this user by using this command:
su user
Now you’re all set up to go about installing the different software packages you’ll need
to get your server up and running.
14.1.2 Installing the base
The majority of software packages are installed on Ubuntu using a system called Aptitude.
You can install packages from their source code too, if you wish (with the help of
a package called build_essential, which contains the build tools you need). These
Aptitude packages are downloaded from a package repository and then installed for
you. To ensure that the list of these packages are up-to-date, run this command:
sudo aptitude update
This command goes through the list of sources, connecting to each of them and
downloading a package list that is then cached by Ubuntu. When you go to install a
package (your next step), Ubuntu will reference these lists to find the packages and
the necessary dependencies for them.
Once this command is complete, continue the set up by configuring RVM and creating
a deploy user.
RVM is short for Ruby Version Manager and provides a simple way to install and
maintain versions of Ruby on your system. You’re going to be using it today to install a
single Ruby version on your system, but it’s good to learn it.
To get started, you’re going to need to install some packages that will provide the
necessary tools to use RVM. These packages are build-essential, git-core, and
curl. RVM uses these packages to build the Ruby version for your server. The gitcore
provides the base Git functionality that RVM uses to stay up to date, and is also