Deploying a Rails App on Amazon EC2 with Capistrano, Nginx, and Puma

In this tutorial, the stack I’ll be using is:

Ubuntu 20.04 LTS
Ruby, version 3.0.2
Rails, version 6.1.4.1
Rbenv
PostgresQL
Nginx
Puma, version 4.3.9
Capistrano
NodeJS
Github

First of all, create an Ubuntu Amazon EC2 Instance.

Install curl, nodejs and required libraries.

  
# Terminal: Production
sudo apt update
sudo apt install curl
sudo apt install zlib1g-dev build-essential libssl-dev libreadline-dev
sudo apt install libyaml-dev libsqlite3-dev sqlite3 libxml2-dev
sudo apt install libxslt1-dev libcurl4-openssl-dev
sudo apt install software-properties-common libffi-dev nodejs

Install yarn

  
# Terminal: Production
curl -sL https://dl.yarnpkg.com/debian/pubkey.gpg | sudo apt-key add -
echo "deb https://dl.yarnpkg.com/debian/ stable main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/yarn.list
sudo apt update && sudo apt install yarn

Install rbenv

  
# Terminal: Production
git clone https://github.com/rbenv/rbenv.git ~/.rbenv
cd ~/.rbenv && src/configure && make -C src
echo 'export PATH="$HOME/.rbenv/bin:$PATH"' >> ~/.bashrc
source ~/.bashrc
~/.rbenv/bin/rbenv init
# Follow instruction to add `eval "$(rbenv init - bash)"` to ~/.bashrc
source ~/.bashrc
type rbenv

Install ruby-build

  
# Terminal: Production
git clone https://github.com/rbenv/ruby-build.git
PREFIX=/usr/local sudo ./ruby-build/install.sh

Install ruby (version 3.0.2)

# Terminal: Production
rbenv install 3.0.2
rbenv global 3.0.2

Install rails (version 6.1.4.1)

  
# Terminal: Production
gem install rails -v 6.1.4.1
rbenv rehash
rails -v

Install Postgresql

  
# Terminal: Production
sudo apt install postgresql postgresql-contrib
sudo apt install libpq-dev

Working with database

  
# Terminal: Production
sudo -u postgres createuser --interactive
  --> Create new user, it will ask for enter username
sudo -u postgres createdb <dbname>
  --> Create new database
sudo -u postgres psql
  --> use psql to set password and add user to database
postgres=# alter user <username> with encrypted password '<password>';
postgres=# grant all privileges on database <dbname> to <username>;
postgres=# \q

  
# Terminal: Production
sudo nano /etc/postgresql/12/main/pg_hba.conf
  local   all             postgres                            peer
  --> change peer to md5
sudo service postgresql restart

Install Nginx

  
# Terminal: Production
sudo apt install nginx

Create github repo and config deploy key

  
# Terminal: Production
ssh-keygen -t rsa
cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub

Follow these instructions to add the newly created key to your GitHub project.

Adding Capistrano to your project

  
# Gemfile
# The Puma gem may already exist in your Gemfile. If not, add it
gem 'puma'

# If you already have a development group, you can add this into it
group :development do
  gem 'capistrano',         require: false
  gem 'capistrano-rvm',     require: false
  gem 'capistrano-rails',   require: false
  gem 'capistrano-bundler', require: false
  gem 'capistrano3-puma',   require: false
end

# Terminal: Development
bundle
cap install

This creates:

Capfile, used to load some pre-defined scripts (selecting the right version of Ruby, pre-compiling assets, installing new gems, and more).
config/deploy.rb, which holds configuration and environment variables

Update these files with the links below:

# Terminal: Development
cap production deploy:initial

Nginx configuration

Create file config/nginx.conf and update with this link: nginx.conf

# Terminal: Development
cap production deploy

  
# Terminal: Production
sudo rm /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default
sudo ln -nfs "/home/ubuntu/apps/[APP_NAME]/current/config/nginx.conf" "/etc/nginx/sites-enabled/[APP_NAME]"
sudo service nginx restart

You’re all done! Now, anytime you want to push an update, all you have to do is commit your changes to your repo, then run:

# Terminal: Development
cap production deploy

I also created a video to show it. You can check it out on Youtube here: