However, the app just got hit by a lot of people at once and stopped responding. I didn’t realize the default setting in Passenger is to spawn a max of 6 Rails instances simultaneously. The documentation recommends 2 instances for a VPS with 256MB of memory (almost exactly what I’m running). So, my server spawned the max and then ran out of memory which made it unresponsive.

I hit a couple of small walls while getting this working so I wanted to share the process.

On linux based machines you can run passenger-status to find out the number of Phusion Passenger application instances that are running.

----------- General information -----------
max      = 6
count    = 3
active   = 0
inactive = 3

----------- Applications -----------
/u/apps/myapp/releases/20080921194503:
  PID: 8792      Sessions: 0
  PID: 8789      Sessions: 0
  PID: 8784      Sessions: 0

You can see that the output show the default max value of 6. To change this number you need to edit your httpd.conf and set the PassengerMaxPoolSize option. Make sure this is outside of your VirtualHost or it won’t work… which, I obviously ran into. It should probably look something like this:

LoadModule passenger_module /usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/passenger-2.0.3/ext/apache2/mod_passenger.so
PassengerRoot /usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/passenger-2.0.3
PassengerRuby /usr/local/bin/ruby
PassengerMaxPoolSize 2

Once you’re done with that restart Apache and Passenger. Now, to take a look at the memory that Apache and Passenger are using run passenger-memory-stats. You’ll see something like this:

------------- Apache processes -------------
PID   PPID  Threads  VMSize   Private  Name
--------------------------------------------
5842  1     1        10.3 MB  0.2 MB   /usr/local/apache2/bin/httpd -k start
8757  5842  1        10.4 MB  0.3 MB   /usr/local/apache2/bin/httpd -k start
8784  5842  1        10.4 MB  0.2 MB   /usr/local/apache2/bin/httpd -k start
9137  5842  1        10.3 MB  0.2 MB   /usr/local/apache2/bin/httpd -k start
9141  5842  1        10.4 MB  0.2 MB   /usr/local/apache2/bin/httpd -k start
9143  5842  1        10.3 MB  0.2 MB   /usr/local/apache2/bin/httpd -k start
9147  5842  1        10.4 MB  0.3 MB   /usr/local/apache2/bin/httpd -k start
9155  5842  1        10.4 MB  0.3 MB   /usr/local/apache2/bin/httpd -k start
9163  5842  1        10.4 MB  0.3 MB   /usr/local/apache2/bin/httpd -k start
9506  5842  1        10.4 MB  0.3 MB   /usr/local/apache2/bin/httpd -k start
9510  5842  1        10.3 MB  0.2 MB   /usr/local/apache2/bin/httpd -k start
9623  5842  1        10.4 MB  0.3 MB   /usr/local/apache2/bin/httpd -k start
9629  5842  1        10.3 MB  0.2 MB   /usr/local/apache2/bin/httpd -k start
9631  5842  1        10.3 MB  0.2 MB   /usr/local/apache2/bin/httpd -k start
9633  5842  1        10.3 MB  0.2 MB   /usr/local/apache2/bin/httpd -k start
9750  5842  1        10.3 MB  0.2 MB   /usr/local/apache2/bin/httpd -k start
9752  5842  1        10.3 MB  0.2 MB   /usr/local/apache2/bin/httpd -k start
9865  5842  1        10.3 MB  0.2 MB   /usr/local/apache2/bin/httpd -k start
### Processes: 18
### Total private dirty RSS: 4.36 MB

-------- Passenger processes ---------
PID   Threads  VMSize   Private  Name
--------------------------------------
8749  20       6.0 MB   0.5 MB   /usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/passenger-2.0.3/ext/apache2/ApplicationPoolServerExecutable 0 /usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/passenger-2.0.3/bin/passenger-spawn-server  /usr/local/bin/ruby  /tmp/passenger_status.5842.fifo
8758  1        5.5 MB   2.9 MB   Passenger spawn server
8789  1        61.6 MB  53.7 MB  Rails: /u/apps/myapp/releases/20080921194503
8792  1        61.8 MB  53.9 MB  Rails: /u/apps/myapp/releases/20080921194503
### Processes: 4
### Total private dirty RSS: 111.03 MB

Now, that may look like a lot of Apache instances running but you can see the “Total private dirty RSS” (real memory usage of the processes) is only 4.36 MB which is nothing in the scheme of things. More importantly, the real memory that the Rails instances are taking is 111.03 MB which my server can handle. Remember, you’ll probably have MySQL and other applications running along with these processes, so don’t up the PassengerMaxPoolSize to the point of bringing your server to its knees.

A very happy 5th birthday to WordPress. Thank you for the late nights and all of the love you’ve given me.

Update: And a happy 3rd birthday to the swissmiss blog!

It’s official. WordPress 2.5 is now out with a crisp new admin interface and great new features. They’ve even redone the website. Here are some of my favorite changes:

• A beautiful new admin interface.
• A much more intuitive flow when making a post.
• Multiple instant file uploads.
• Thumbnail, medium and full-sized image options (and you can change the image dimensions in Settings).
• A quick way to display your photos as a gallery
• Easily add/edit tags so no more plugins are needed.
• A visual editor that doesn’t break your code (this one is great for my clients).
• Search now looks at posts and pages.

I’ve always thought that WordPress is one of the best blogging and content management systems. It’s incredibly intuitive for the user (even more so now) and extremely flexible for developers.

Thanks so much to everyone who has helped with WordPress!

What: Free Web Consultation
When: February, 13th 2008 7:00pm - 8:30pm
Where: High Point University, Congdon Hall - Room 138 (it’s the building with the purple awnings and signs will be posted to help guide you to the room)
RSVP: Triad Web Meetup

These events are always free and everyone is welcome so please spread the word!

Thanks to the input of Michael Hartl, I updated the plugin to work properly with Adobe Reader 8. Adobe turned on some security settings by default in the new Adobe Reader which broke the previous version of the plugin.

See the full details and download the plugin.

I made the following minor changes to get it working for me and posted the script below.

• Changed ‘wget’ to ‘curl -O’
• Updated a couple of links that weren’t working for me
• Updated sourceforge links to the east coast
• Updated links to latest version of source code (as of today)

#!/bin/sh
curl -O http://download.savannah.gnu.org/releases/freetype/freetype-2.3.5.tar.gz
tar xzvf freetype-2.3.5.tar.gz
cd freetype-2.3.5
./configure --prefix=/usr/local
make
sudo make install
cd ..

curl -O http://superb-east.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/libpng/libpng-1.2.23.tar.bz2
tar jxvf libpng-1.2.23.tar.bz2
cd libpng-1.2.23
./configure --prefix=/usr/local
make
sudo make install
cd ..

curl -O http://www.ijg.org/files/jpegsrc.v6b.tar.gz
tar xzvf jpegsrc.v6b.tar.gz
cd jpeg-6b
ln -s `which glibtool` ./libtool
export MACOSX_DEPLOYMENT_TARGET=10.5
./configure --enable-shared --prefix=/usr/local
make
sudo make install
cd ..

curl -O ftp://ftp.remotesensing.org/libtiff/tiff-3.8.2.tar.gz
tar xzvf tiff-3.8.2.tar.gz
cd tiff-3.8.2
./configure --prefix=/usr/local
make
sudo make install
cd ..

curl -O http://superb-east.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/wvware/libwmf-0.2.8.4.tar.gz
tar xzvf libwmf-0.2.8.4.tar.gz
cd libwmf-0.2.8.4
make clean
./configure
make
sudo make install
cd ..

curl -O http://www.littlecms.com/lcms-1.17.tar.gz
tar xzvf lcms-1.17.tar.gz
cd lcms-1.17
make clean
./configure
make
sudo make install
cd ..

curl -O http://superb-east.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/ghostscript/ghostscript-8.61.tar.gz
tar zxvf ghostscript-8.61.tar.gz
cd ghostscript-8.61/
./configure  --prefix=/usr/local
make
sudo make install
cd ..

curl -O http://mirror.cs.wisc.edu/pub/mirrors/ghost/GPL/current/ghostscript-fonts-std-8.11.tar.gz
tar zxvf ghostscript-fonts-std-8.11.tar.gz
sudo mv fonts /usr/local/share/ghostscript

curl -O ftp://ftp.imagemagick.org/pub/ImageMagick/ImageMagick-6.3.7-1.tar.gz
tar xzvf ImageMagick-6.3.7-1.tar.gz
cd ImageMagick-6.3.7
export CPPFLAGS=-I/usr/local/include
export LDFLAGS=-L/usr/local/lib
./configure --prefix=/usr/local --disable-static --with-modules --without-perl --without-magick-plus-plus --with-quantum-depth=8 --with-gs-font-dir=/usr/local/share/ghostscript/fonts
make
sudo make install
cd ..

To test that ImageMagick was installed properly you can check the version number.

convert -version

[you should see something like this]
Version: ImageMagick 6.3.7 11/26/07 Q8 http://www.imagemagick.org
Copyright: Copyright (C) 1999-2007 ImageMagick Studio LLC

To test that ImageMagick is working properly you can run the following test. It will create a copy of the ImageMagick logo.

convert logo: logo.gif

For years my brother, Glenn, and I have talked about working together. I’m ecstatic to say that it finally happened! Glenn started his own business, Glenn Fu, and we’re teaming up on projects. He’s a strong developer and getting his feet wet in the small-business/freelance world. Right away, he picked up Ruby on Rails and is making sure our code is solid by keeping us on track with BDD and using RSpec. It’s extremely refreshing working with Glenn who makes me challenge my business process and development style. Every business could use that type of shot in the arm.

I’m so happy working with you Bro!

“Creativity expert Sir Ken Robinson challenges the way we’re educating our children. He champions a radical rethink of our school systems, to cultivate creativity and acknowledge multiple types of intelligence.”

(via swissmiss)

1. Open the httpd.conf file for editing (sudo vi /etc/apache2/httpd.conf).
2. Uncomment the line
   LoadModule php5_module     libexec/apache2/libphp5.so
   by removing the ‘#’ from the front of the line. This will enable PHP 5. The php5.conf file is loaded automatically from /private/etc/apache2/other/.
3. Create a file called _sites.conf in your Sites folder. I like to keep my site configuration in the Sites folder to make it more easily accessible as I’m doing development.
4. Add the following line to the very bottom of the httpd.conf file:
   Include /Users/yourusername/Sites/_sites.conf
   That will make Apache load all the configuration settings from your _sites.conf file.
5. Add the following information to your _sites.conf file.

# Enable named virtual hosts
NameVirtualHost *:80

# Override the default httpd.conf directives.  Make sure to
# use 'Allow from all' to prevent 403 Forbidden message.
<Directory />
	Options ExecCGI FollowSymLinks
	AllowOverride all
	Allow from all
</Directory>

# A basic virtual host config
<VirtualHost *:80>
	# Add yoursite to your /etc/hosts file so you can
	# type it directly in your browser
	ServerName yoursite

	DocumentRoot /Users/yourusername/Sites/yoursite
</VirtualHost>

Now you just need to start/restart Apache and the sites should load. PHP should be working and no more 403 Forbidden message.