Question

I’ve just deployed a Rails application using Capistrano under /home/username/app_name.

Now, I’m not quite sure on how to setup Nginx, I’ve followed this tutorial, http://coding.smashingmagazine.com/2011/06/28/setup-a-ubuntu-vps-for-hosting-ruby-on-rails-applications-2/comment-page-1/#comment-594321. I have this on my nginx.conf file, I modified the first server block I saw:

server {
   listen 80;
   server_name www.yourdomain.com;
   root /home/johndoe/test_app/current/public;
   passenger_enabled on;
   ...
}

But now, I’m not sure how to procede. What exactly is the server_name in the example above? And how should I access the application? I’ve tried typing in my ip address and nothing shows up. I’m using Linode by the way. And how do I set up the nameservers for my domain? Detailed explanations and tutorials would be very helpful. Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

server_name on Nginx is exactly the same as ServerName in Apache, i.e. the domain name you’d like to use for this directory (named virtual host).

With passenger set to on you should be able to access the application directly via the domain.