RadRails 0.5

RadRails 0.5 was released. These guys are working hard even on holiday.

Step by Step Instruction on Installing Ruby on Rails on Ubuntu 5.04

Here is a link to a step by step instruction on installing Ruby on Rails on Ubuntu 5.04. I switched my installation from using the Rails version that comes from Ubuntu to the one installed through RubyGems. The reason I did this was to be able to use the latest version of Rails.

Links to Ruby on Rails Tutorials

Digitial Media Minutes posted 12 Top Links to Ruby on Rails tutorials. It is definitely something you should look into if you want to learn about Ruby on Rails. It has tutorials on everything from beginning development to deployment.

Finally managed to get RadRails working on Ubuntu 5.04

I finally managed to get RadRails working on my Linux machine. The reason I was having problem connecting to MySQL database was because I didn't turn on networking for MySQL. Yes, I am an idiot but it wasn't obvious that MySQL is skipping networking. It was only using socket and not TCP/IP.

I forgot the reason why I was doing netstat -a on the machine. But while looking through the list I didn't see any process listening on port 3306. That was odd since I was expecting MySQL to be listening to that port. I took a look at /etc/mysql/my.cnf and sure enough port=3306 is there. So, the next obvious step was googling to see why that is the case. I found this post which talk about skip_networking option in my.cnf. I look at my own my.cnf and skip_networking was enabled. I commented it out and restarted MySQL. I could see a process listening on port 3306 after doing a netstat -a. I tried to telnet to the port but got this error, "localhost.localdomain' is not allowed to connect to this MySQL server Connection closed by foreign host".

So, I added localhost.localdomain to the list of allowed hosts in MySQL and I was able to telnet to port 3306. I fired up RadRails and attempted to start the server. I still get the database connection error but now there is an error message about todo@localhost.localdomain is not allow. I went ahead and added the user to the database and now everything is working. I can finally use RadRails to start developing the Todo tutorial. I probably has the least secure MySQL server in the world but it is behind the firewall so it shouldn't be a problem.

Also, RadRails 0.4.1 is out. I can't wait until I have some free time to spend playing around with Ruby on Rails.

RadRails 0.4

RadRails 0.4 is out.

I am still having the same database connection problem though. I found this post on Sam Ruby's blog that describes my problem but there is still no solution.

I also ordered Agile Web Development with Rails and Programming Ruby (2nd. Ed.) to further my knowledge on Ruby on Rails.

Setting up Rails in Eclipse

It has been a while since my last post. I tried to use http://www.radrails.org/ with Eclipse but there seems to be a problem with connecting to the database. I think it has something to do with the new password encryption scheme that MySQL uses. Every time I try to start the web server, it complains about not being able to connect to the database. But the web site actually work and I can get data back from the database. I also not able to create scaffolding since it can't connect to the database. I haven't look deeply to see what is the real reason for the failure yet.

I also found this website that has instructions on how to setup Rails for Eclipse on Windows. I don't see a reason why these instruction wouldn't work in a Linux environment with some minor changes.

http://www.napcs.com/howto/railsonwindows.html

Hopefully, I will find sometime to give these instructions a try.

Installing Ruby on Rails

The first step in the learning process is actually installing Ruby on Rails into my computer. I have a Dell Inspiron 5000 with Ubuntu 5.04. Installing rails is as simple as adding hoary-backports repository to /etc/apt/sources.list and do an apt-get update and apt-get install rails.

Here is the installation instructions for Ruby on Rails on Ubuntu.