This document describes installation and deployment of the application on Ubuntu Server. Tested on Ubuntu Server 14.04 LTE.
- Install requirements
- Ruby
- MySQL Server
- Phusion Passenger for Apache2
- Deploy application
- Apache Host file
- Passenger restart configuration
- Permissions
- Install missing gems
- Application configuration
- Secrets
- Database connection & rake
- Cron job
- Application settings and variables
- Links
We recommend to install ruby with a Manager such as Ruby Version Manager (RVM). This installation may conflict with prior ruby installations. Full documentation is available here.
Install RVM: We advise a multiuser installation. That way you don't have to setup and configure the ruby environment for multiple users.
Install the stable version of RVM with the command
\curl -sSL https://get.rvm.io | sudo bash -s stable
Install Ruby Version 2.2.1
rvm install 2.2.1
You can check the installation with
ruby -v
Disable rdoc and ri installation for every gem by adding the following line to your ~/.gemrc or /etc/gemrc
gem: --no-rdoc --no-ri
Install Rails Version 4.2.0
gem install rails -v 4.2.0
Install MySQL Server and thedatabase development files
sudo apt-get install mysql-server
sudo apt get install libmysqlclient-dev
You can reset the root password with
sudo dpkg-reconfigure mysql-server-5.5
The Apache2 Webserver is most likely pre-installed, if not you can install Apache2 with
sudo apt-get install apache2 apache2-doc
Full installation documentation for Phusion Passenger can be found here.
You can install Passenger via APT Repository or Gem:
gem install passenger
The gem only contains source files. You need to run the installer:
passenger-install-apache2-module
Check if Apache loads Passenger
sudo a2enmod passenger
Verify that Passenger is running
passenger-memory-stats
Deploy the application to /var/www/webapp or another directory. You need to create an Host file for Apache. Browse to /etc/apache2/sites-available
Create a new file ror.conf containing the lines
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName pse1.iam.unibe.ch
DocumentRoot /var/www/webapp/public
Alias /phpmyadmin /var/www/phpmyadmin
<Directory /var/www/webapp/public>
Allow from all
Options -MultiViews
PassengerAppEnv development
# Uncomment this if you're on Apache >= 2.4:
#Require all granted
</Directory>
</VirtualHost>
The variable PassengerAppEnv defines the ruby Environment. For more information see here.
Passenger needs a file called restart.txt to be able to automatically restart (e.g if you use continouse integration).
Browse to the applicatipon directory /var/www/webapp and create a tmp directory and a restart file:
mkdir tmp
touch tmp/restart.txt
The file doesn't need to have any content.
The Spring gem needs to write to /tmp. You need to change the directory permissions if the spring gem is denied access:
sudo chmod 1777 -R /tmp
(not 777 nor tmp/)
Browse to the application root webapp/. In the terminal type
bundle install
A secrets file named secrets.yml must be present in webapp/config and contain the Twitter keys in addition to the secret key base:
twitter_client_consumer_key: ****
twitter_client_consumer_secret: ****
twitter_client_access_token: ****
twitter_client_access_token_secret:****
The database connection can be configured in the file database.yml located in webapp/config. Our default configuration is:
adapter: mysql2
pool: 5
timeout: 5000
username: root
password: root
encoding: utf8mb4
collation: utf8mb4_unicode_ci
If you have trouble connecting to the DB, you may specifie the socket path:
socket: /var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock
The socket path may vary.
In the application root path ẁebapp/ you can invoke rake to create your DB tables with
rake db:create
If you need to reset the DB type
rake db:reset
If you have configured the application you can invoke the cron job. Browse to the application directory /var/www/webapp and run in the terminal
whenever --update-crontab MegaUltraTweet
You can check the cron jobs with
crontab -l
and edit them with
crontab -e
or directly in the file webapp/config/shedule.rb .The cron log file is located in webapp/log/
The application settings can be changed by setting the global variables in webapp/config/application.rb.
# Global Variables
# These values will be initiated as the first hashtags
# They are always part of the first Startingpoint object
DEFAULT_STARTING_VALUES = %w[ Technology Smartphone ]
# Only tweets since this date are taken into account when searching twitter
TWEETS_SINCE_STRING = 2.days.ago.strftime("%Y-%m-%d")
# Short rollover is performed every n minutes
INTERVAL_SHORT_TIME = 15.minutes
# Long rollover is performed every n days
INTERVAL_LONG_TIME = 2.days
# Popularity class returns times of usage of an object for this many short rollover entries
# Time interval should be consistent with INTERVAL_SHORT_TIME
POPULARITY_SHORT_INTERVAL = 1
# Popularity class returns times of usage of an object for this many short rollover entries
# Time interval should be consistent with INTERVAL_LONG_TIME
POPULARITY_LONG_INTERVAL = 192
# This many hashtags are included in the top/bottom statistic
# used by the Trending object
TRENDING_HASHTAGS_NUMBER = 20
# This many hashtags are added to the Startingpoint object
HASHTAG_TO_START_NUMBER = 30
# Maximum number of hashtags in Startingpoint object
HASHTAG_TO_START_MAX = 80
# Recursive steps taken during search
QUERY_DEPTH = 5
# Number of hashtags to start a new query during search
QUERY_DETAIL = 10
# Get this many tweets from twitter for each search
GET_THIS_MANY = 400
# All tweets older than this are removed during rollover
DELETE_OLDER_TWEETS = 3.days.ago
# Search during rollover will stop after this many searches
# Add some buffer for user input. Max searches provided by twitter is at 450
PROVIDED_SEARCHES = 400
# This is the limit as how many tweets in the DB are to be considered. Set to nil to disable.
DB_SEARCH_LIMIT = 3000
# Save and analyse tweet only if rank is higher than this value
TWEET_RELEVANCE_MINIMUM = 1