Hosting a ruby on rails application on nyu server

Alec Jacobson

September 11, 2009

weblog/

Since setting up a ruby on rails app bluehost is such a disastrous hurdle, I've resorted to hosting one of my projects locally on a nyu cims linserv machine and then using ports to access it via the internet. This is a basically reiterating the information found on the cims website. ssh into access.cims.nyu.edu
ssh username@access.cims.nyu.edu
ssh again into a server (must be done after ssh-ing into access.cims.nyu.edu) there are three: linserv1, linserv2, and linserv3.
ssh username@linserv1.cims.nyu.edu
cd into your rails app, something like
cd rails/app_name/
start up your local webbrick server as a daemon sending all output to /dev/null
script/server -d -p [portnumber] > /dev/null
where portnumber is some number like 25000, but not 25000 because two apps can't use the same port. So pick an unusual and high number and don't tell anybody what it is. You will now be able to access your rails app at http://linserv1.cims.nyu.edu:[portnumber]/ When you're done with your app you will need to kill it. Follow the instructions I have previously posted about. I've noticed that occasionally these servers "go down", or at least my webrick rails app "goes down", just repeat the steps and restart the server if this happens.