How To Install Ruby on Rails on CentOS / RHEL8

Introduction

Ruby on Rails® is an open-source web framework written in Ruby. It helps you create highly powerful web sites and appls.

Rails is released under MIT license.

Also Rails is a model–view–controller (MVC) framework, provide default structures for a database, a web service, and web pages.

So this guide will help you to install Ruby on Rails on CentOS / RHEL 8.

The Installation

Just follow these steps:

• Enable EPEL repo to get dependent packages and install the development packages.

dnf install readline readline-devel libffi-devel autoconf automake libtool openssl-devel make bzip2 bison gcc-c++ curl sqlite-devel git-core zlib zlib-devel patch -y

Install NodeJs

So We will install Nodejs to provide a functionality of Coffee Script and the Asset Pipeline in Rails, depend on a Javascript runtime.

Install the latest version of nodejs which is 16.x

To install the node js.

• Just run these commands below.

curl -sL https://rpm.nodesource.com/setup_16.x | bash -
dnf install -y nodejs

• Verify that the Node.js has been installed.

node -v

Install Yarn

• Also to install the Yarn package manager with running commands below:

[root@unixcop ~]# curl -sL https://dl.yarnpkg.com/rpm/yarn.repo | sudo tee /etc/yum.repos.d/yarn.repo
[yarn]
name=Yarn Repository
baseurl=https://dl.yarnpkg.com/rpm/
enabled=1
gpgcheck=1
gpgkey=https://dl.yarnpkg.com/rpm/pubkey.gpg
[root@unixcop ~]#

Install Ruby

Also we have illustrated how to install Ruby with three different ways in this Ruby Installation Guide.

Just choose a way to install Ruby (rbenv method recommended).

• After installation is done, check the Ruby version:

ruby -v

The Installation the bundler

• Install the bundler with gem as shown in command below:

[root@unixcop ~]# gem install bundler
Fetching bundler-2.2.28.gem
Successfully installed bundler-2.2.28
Parsing documentation for bundler-2.2.28
Installing ri documentation for bundler-2.2.28
Done installing documentation for bundler after 4 seconds
1 gem installed
[root@unixcop ~]#

Install Rails

• We will install latest version of Rails v6.1.4.1 with :

gem install rails

• Verify the Rails version.

rails -v

Add Rails listen port in Firewall

Ruby on Rails listens on port 3000. It’s the default port for Rails

• So, Allow 3000/TCP in firewall.

firewall-cmd --permanent --add-port=3000/tcp
firewall-cmd --reload

Create a Test Application

Now Create your own test application with MariaDB support to test it out.

• Install Database

Note: Rails comes with sqlite3 as the default database, which is not recommended to use in a production environment.

• So Install and use MariaDB as a database for your application.

dnf install -y mariadb-server mariadb mariadb-devel

• Start and enable mariadb.

systemctl start mariadb
systemctl enable mariadb

• Secure your MariaDB installation with command.

mysql_secure_installation

• Install the mysql2 extension to be your application adapter.

gem install mysql2

Create Rails Application

• Create a new application .

rails new unixcop -d mysql

• Be patient till the installation finishes.

• Edit your app’s database configuration config/database.yml file.

vim config/database.yml

• Update the database username and password as shown below:

• Create the database.

rake db:create

Validate your Application

• Go to the application directory.

cd unixcop/

• Start your rails application with command:

rails server -b 0.0.0.0

Access Rails

• Visit your Rails application with the URL in your web browser.

http://localhost:3000 OR http://IP_address:3000

Conclusion

That’s All. You have successfully installed on Ruby on Rails on CentOS / RHEL 8. Thank you.