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 3.0.14. This is a bug fix release.

[Apache] Fixed a long-standing mod_rewrite-related problem.

Some mod_rewrite rules would not work, but it depends on the exact mod_rewrite configuration so it would work for some people but not for others. Issue #563. Thanks a lot to cedricmaion for providing information on the nature of the bug and to peter.nash55 for providing a VM that allowed us to reproduce the problem.

[Nginx] Preferred Nginx version to 1.2.2.

The previously preferred version was 1.2.1.

Other changes

Cleared some confusing terminology in the documentation.
Fixed some Ruby 1.9 encoding problems.

How do I upgrade to 3.0.14?

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. You can find installation instructions on the Brightbox website.
(Note that John is currently packaging 3.0.14, 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 3.0.14, 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!