Deploying a Rails App with Apache & MySQL on Ubuntu Server · James Hibbard

Getting a Rails application running on a remote server involves a fair bit of setup. Recently, I’ve had to go through the process a couple of times—provisioning a virtual machine, installing and configuring Apache, MySQL, Ruby, and Rails, and finally deploying the app. To make future deployments easier (and to have something to refer back to), I decided to document the steps. In this tutorial, I’ll walk through how to deploy a Rails application (the one built in this guide) to a virtual private server running Ubuntu. In my case, I’m using a VirtualBox VM, but the same instructions apply to any internet-accessible server that supports SSH. The goal is to get the app up and running and accessible over the web. Let’s begin.