Phusion Blog

Phusion Passenger is an Apache and Nginx module for deploying Ruby web applications. It has a strong focus on ease of use, stability and performance. Phusion Passenger is built on top of tried-and-true, battle-hardened Unix technologies, yet at the same time introduces innovations not found in most traditional Unix servers. Since version 3.0 it can also run standalone without an external web server, making it not only easier for first-time users but also ideal on development environments.

Recent changes

Phusion Passenger is under constant maintenance and development. We are pleased to announce Phusion Passenger version 3.0.11. This is a bug fix release.

3.0.10 was skipped because we discovered a last-minute compilation problem on FreeBSD after having already pushed the gem to RubyGems.org.

[Nginx] Dropped support for Nginx versions older than 1.0.0

[Nginx] Fixed support for Nginx 1.1.4+

[Nginx, Standalone] Upgraded default Nginx version to 1.0.10

The previously default version was 1.0.5.

[Nginx] New option passenger_max_requests

This is equivalent to the PassengerMaxRequests option in the Apache version: Phusion Passenger will automatically shutdown a worker process once it has processed the specified number of requests. Contributed by Paul Kmiec.

[Apache] New option PassengerBufferResponse

The Apache version did not buffer responses. This could block the Ruby worker process in case of slow clients. We now enable response buffering by default. It can be turned off through this option. Feature contributed by Ryo Onodera.

Fixed remaining Ruby 1.9.3 compatibility problems

We already supported Ruby 1.9.3 since 3.0.8, but due to bugs in Ruby 1.9.3’s build system Phusion Passenger would fail to detect Ruby 1.9.3 features on some systems. Fixes issue #714.

Fixed a bug in PassengerPreStart

A regression was introduced in 3.0.8, causing the prespawn script to connect to the host name instead of to 127.0.0.1. Fix contributed by Andy Allan.

Fixed compatibility with GCC 4.6

Affected systems include Ubuntu 11.10.

Fixed various compilation problems.

Fixed some Ruby 1.9 encoding problems.

Fixed some Ruby 1.9.3 deprecation warnings.

Improved performance and solved some warnings on Xen systems by compiling with `-mno-tls-direct-seg-refs`. Patch contributed by Michał Pokrywka.

How do I upgrade to 3.0.11?

Via a gem

First install the gem with the following command:

gem install passenger

If you’re using Phusion Passenger for Apache or for Nginx, then re-run the Apache or Nginx module installer, whichever is appropriate:

passenger-install-apache2-module
passenger-install-nginx-module

At the end the installer will tell you to paste a configuration snippet into your web server config file. Replace the old snippet that you already had with this new one.

Phusion Passenger Standalone users don’t need to run anything else. Whenever you type

passenger start

it will automatically upgrade itself.

Via Ubuntu packages

John Leach from Brightbox has kindly provided Ubuntu packages for Phusion Passenger. The package is available from the Brightbox repository which you can find at:

http://apt.brightbox.net

Add the following line to the Third Party Software Sources:

deb http://apt.brightbox.net hardy main

(The simplest way to do that is to create a file in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ containing the deb instruction, and then run ‘apt-get update’).

Once you’ve done this then you can install Phusion Passenger by running:

sudo apt-get install libapache2-mod-passenger

-or-

sudo apt-get install nginx-brightbox

(Note that John is currently packaging 3.0.11, so it might take a while before this release shows up in the apt repository.)

Via RedHat/CentOS packages

YUM repositories with RPMs are maintained by Erik Ogan and Stealthy Monkeys Consulting. Please note that Erik is currently packaging 3.0.11, so it might take a while before this release shows up in the yum repositories.

Step 1: install the release package

The easiest way to install Phusion Passenger and keep it up to date is to install the passenger-release package from the main repository:

Fedora Core 15:

yum install http://passenger.stealthymonkeys.com/fedora/15/passenger-release.noarch.rpm

Fedora Core 14:

yum install http://passenger.stealthymonkeys.com/fedora/14/passenger-release.noarch.rpm

RHEL 5 / CentOS 5 / ScientificLinux 5:
(Note: these packages depend on EPEL.)

rpm -Uvh http://passenger.stealthymonkeys.com/rhel/5/passenger-release.noarch.rpm

RHEL 6 / CentOS 6 / ScientificLinux 6:

yum install http://passenger.stealthymonkeys.com/rhel/6/passenger-release.noarch.rpm

Step 2: use Yum

From there you can use Yum to install packages. For example, try one of these:

yum install nginx-passenger

or

yum install mod_passenger

or

yum install passenger-standalone

Building your own packages

There are instructions for building your own packages and Yum repositories in the rpm directory ReadMe within the GitHub repository.

Final

Phusion Passenger is provided to the community for free. If you like Phusion Passenger, please consider sending us a donation. Thank you!