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Install some dependencies

The first step is installing some essential dependencies from your VPS's package manager.

Ubuntu/Debian

sudo apt-get install git libxml2-dev libxslt-dev libcurl4-openssl-dev libpq-dev build-essential postgresql libreadline-dev

CentOS/Fedora

sudo yum install git libxml2-devel libxslt-devel curl-devel postgresql-devel make automake gcc gcc-c++ postgresql-server readline-devel openssl-devel

On CentOS after installing Postgres, I needed to run these commands, Fedora likely the same.

service postgresql initdb && service postgresql start

Arch Linux

pacman -S git postgresql base-devel libxml2 libxslt curl readline postgresql-libs

Here are some Arch specific instructions for setting up postgres

systemd-tmpfiles --create postgresql.conf
chown -c -R postgres:postgres /var/lib/postgres
sudo su - postgres -c "initdb --locale en_US.UTF-8 -E UTF8 -D '/var/lib/postgres/data'"
systemctl start postgresql
systemctl enable postgresql

Set up the database

Create a postgresql user to own the database Stringer will use, you will need to create a password too, make a note of it.

sudo -u postgres createuser -D -A -P stringer

Now create the database Stringer will use

sudo -u postgres createdb -O stringer stringer_live

Create your stringer user

We will run stringer as it's own user for security, also we will be installing a specific version of ruby to stringer user's home directory, this saves us worrying whether the version of ruby and some dependencies provided by your distro are compatible with Stringer.

sudo useradd stringer -m -s /bin/bash
sudo su -l stringer

Always use -l switch when you switch user to your stringer user, without it your modified .bash_profile or .profile file will be ignored.

Install Ruby for your stringer user

We are going to use Rbenv to manage the version of Ruby you use.

cd
git clone git://github.com/sstephenson/rbenv.git .rbenv
echo 'export PATH="$HOME/.rbenv/bin:$PATH"' >> $HOME/.bash_profile
echo 'eval "$(rbenv init -)"' >> $HOME/.bash_profile
git clone git://github.com/sstephenson/ruby-build.git $HOME/.rbenv/plugins/ruby-build
source ~/.bash_profile

rbenv install 2.7.5
rbenv local 2.7.5
rbenv rehash

We also need to install bundler which will handle Stringer's dependencies

gem install bundler
rbenv rehash

We will also need foreman to run our app

gem install foreman

Install Stringer and set it up

Grab Stringer from github

git clone git@github.com:stringer-rss/stringer.git
cd stringer

Use bundler to grab and build Stringer's dependencies

bundle install
rbenv rehash

Stringer uses environment variables to configure the application. Edit these values to reflect your settings.

echo 'export DATABASE_URL="postgres://stringer:EDIT_ME@localhost/stringer_live"' >> $HOME/.bash_profile
echo 'export RACK_ENV="production"' >> $HOME/.bash_profile
echo 'export RAILS_ENV="production"' >> $HOME/.bash_profile
echo "export SECRET_KEY_BASE=`openssl rand -hex 64`" >> $HOME/.bash_profile
echo "export ENCRYPTION_PRIMARY_KEY=`openssl rand -hex 64`" >> $HOME/.bash_profile
echo "export ENCRYPTION_DETERMINISTIC_KEY=`openssl rand -hex 64`" >> $HOME/.bash_profile
echo "export ENCRYPTION_KEY_DERIVATION_SALT=`openssl rand -hex 64`" >> $HOME/.bash_profile
source ~/.bash_profile

Tell stringer to run the database in production mode, using the postgres database you created earlier.

cd $HOME/stringer
rake db:migrate RAILS_ENV=production

Run the application:

foreman start

Set up a cron job to parse the rss feeds.

crontab -e

add the lines

SHELL=/bin/bash
PATH=/home/stringer/.rbenv/bin:/bin/:/usr/bin:/usr/local/bin/:/usr/local/sbin
*/10 * * * *  source $HOME/.bash_profile; cd $HOME/stringer/; bundle exec rake fetch_feeds;

Manage Stringer With Systemd

You may want to manage Stringer as a systemd service on distributions come with systemd.

As stringer user, export app service files with foreman:

cd ~/stringer
mkdir systemd-services
foreman export systemd systemd-services -a stringer -u stringer

Logout stringer user, install systemd services:

sudo cp -a ~stringer/stringer/systemd-services/* /etc/systemd/system

As stringer user, close existing Stringer instance:

exit # exit app

Start app as a systemd service and make app run at startup

sudo systemctl start stringer.target
sudo systemctl enable stringer.target

Reverse Proxy With Nginx

You may want to use nginx as reverse proxy server to add SSL/TLS for security reason. Here is a sample configuration:

server {
    listen 80;
    # listen 443 ssl;
    # ssl_certificate ssl/fullchain.pem;
    # ssl_certificate_key ssl/privatekey.pem;
    # you can try to use Mozilla SSL Configuration Generator
    # to harden your TLS configuration
    # https://mozilla.github.io/server-side-tls/ssl-config-generator/
    server_name example.com;
    location / {
        proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:1337/;
        proxy_set_header Host $host;
    }
}

Deploy Stringer With Passenger And Apache

You may want to run Stringer with the existing Apache server. We need to install mod_passenger and edit few files.

The installation of mod_passenger depends on VPS's system distribution release. Offical installation guide is available at Passenger Library

After validating the mod_passenger install, we will fetch dependencies again to meet Passenger's default GEM_HOME set. As stringer user:

cd ~/stringer
bundle install --path vendor/bundle

Edit database.yml with correct database url:

cd ~/stringer
sed -i "s|url: .*|url: $DATABASE_URL|" config/database.yml

Add VirtualHost to your Apache installation, here's a sample configuration:

<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerName example.com
    DocumentRoot /home/stringer/stringer/public

    PassengerEnabled On
    PassengerAppRoot /home/stringer/stringer
    PassengerRuby /home/stringer/.rbenv/shims/ruby
    # PassengerLogFile /dev/null # don't flow logs to apache error.log

    <Directory /home/stringer/stringer/public>
        Options FollowSymLinks
        Require all granted
        AllowOverride All
    </Directory>


    # you can harden your connection with https, don't forget
    # change to <VirtualHost *:443>
    # SSLCertificateFile /etc/path/to/example.com/fullchain.pem
    # SSLCertificateKeyFile /etc/path/to/example.com/privkey.pem
    # Include /etc/path/to/options-ssl-apache.conf
</VirtualHost>