Home made nginx + phusion passenger OS X port

The instructions to do this are similar to those in my previous article.

Install passenger gem
The first step is to install the Phusion Passenger gem:

$ sudo gem install -V -r passenger
[...]
Installing RDoc documentation for passenger-2.2.4...

Take note of where the passenger gem installed the nginx module code (ext/nginx/*) that will be required further down. In this case the install directory will be /opt/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/passenger-2.2.4/ext/.

Compile nginx passenger module
You also need to compile the passenger nginx module if it was not already compiled:

$ cd /opt/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/passenger-2.2.4/ext/
$ sudo rake nginx
[...]
g++ ext/nginx/HelperServer.cpp -o ext/nginx/HelperServer -Iext -Iext/common -D_REENTRANT -I/usr/local/include -Wall -g -DPASSENGER_DEBUG -DBOOST_DISABLE_ASSERTS  ext/nginx/libpassenger_common.a ext/nginx/libboost_oxt.a -lpthread

Modify the nginx Portfile
Ensure you have nginx port installed. Your Portfile will most likely be in /opt/local/var/macports/sources/rsync.macports.org/release/ports/www/nginx/Portfile.

Add the following variant block to the end of the file:

variant passenger description {Enable Phusion Passenger (mod_rails) support} {
    configure.args-append   --add-module=/opt/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/passenger-2.2.4/ext/nginx
}

Rebuild/install nginx
When you try and reinstall nginx now it will use the updated Portfile and add the passenger module to the mix:

$ sudo port uninstall nginx && sudo port clean nginx
$ sudo port -vvvvv install nginx +passenger

Nginx passenger configuration
To enable and take advantage of the passenger nginx module you need to edit the /opt/local/etc/nginx/nginx.conf config. Here's an example:

#user  nobody;
worker_processes  1;

#error_log  logs/error.log;
#error_log  logs/error.log  notice;
#error_log  logs/error.log  info;

#pid        logs/nginx.pid;


events {
    worker_connections  1024;
}


http {
  include       mime.types;
  default_type  application/octet-stream;

  #log_format  main  '$remote_addr - $remote_user [$time_local] $request '
  #                  '"$status" $body_bytes_sent "$http_referer" '
  #                  '"$http_user_agent" "$http_x_forwarded_for"';

  #access_log  logs/access.log  main;

  sendfile        on;
  #tcp_nopush     on;

  #keepalive_timeout  0;
  keepalive_timeout  65;

  gzip  on;

  # Enable Phusion Passenger nginx module
  passenger_root /opt/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/passenger-2.2.4;
  passenger_ruby /opt/local/bin/ruby;

  server {
    listen 80;
    server_name foo.example.com;
    root /var/www/foo/public;   # <--- be sure to point to 'public'!
    passenger_enabled on;
  }
}

Ensure that the port, server_name and root variables have valid values for your environment.

If you want to use a non-production rails environment you can add the following to the block after passenger_enabled:

      rails_env development;

Once done you can restart nginx and you should see the following processes that confirm things are running:

$ ps axw | egrep "nginx|passenger"
55935   ??  Ss     0:00.00 nginx: master process nginx
55936   ??  S      0:00.00 nginx: worker process
55925 s001  S      0:00.01 PassengerNginxHelperServer /opt/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/passenger-2.2.4 /opt/local/bin/ruby 3 4 0 6 0 300 1 nobody 4294967294 4294967294 /tmp/passenger.55923
55938 s001  R+     0:00.00 egrep nginx|passenger

The final test to see if everything is working is to open a browser and to browse to the server_name and port defined above. Errors will be reported in /opt/local/var/log/nginx/error.log as well as the development/production logs of the rails project you're running.