Continuing on from our last post Redmine Project Management on Debian Lenny, here we will setup Ruby on Rails (and thus Redmine) to run through Apache2, using Passenger (aka mod_rails).

This is a fairly brief step by step guide and assumes you are familiar with Debian, the command line, and tools like apt-get and ruby gems.

1. Install passenger:
   sudo gem install passenger
    
2. Setup passenger in Apache. Run this command and follow the instructions:
   sudo passenger-install-apache2-module
    
3. When it asks you to edit the Apache config file, do it like so (using the contents given to you by the program):

   Create /etc/apache2/mods-available/passenger.load with the contents:
   LoadModule passenger_module /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/passenger-2.2.14/ext/apache2/mod_passenger.so

   Create /etc/apache2/mods-available/passenger.conf with the contents:
   PassengerRoot /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/passenger-2.2.14
PassengerRuby /usr/bin/ruby1.8

   Enable passenger module:
   a2enmod passenger

   Note: Make sure you use the values provided by the program and do not simply copy & paste what is here!

4. Edit the Virtual host file to something like this:
   <VirtualHost *>
ServerName redmine.mydomain.com
DocumentRoot /var/redmine/1.0-stable/public
RailsEnv production
</VirtualHost>

   Note: The document root cannot be a softlink, because the dispatch script of rails will change directory using “../”

5. Restart Apache and all should be good:
   sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart
    
6. Test by going to http://redmine.mydomain.com