This has been an interesting day, attempting to get a fresh build of Typo 4.0.1 installed on a shared hosting account with DreamHost.

The reason for this, predominantly, was to practice deploying a Rails application on DreamHost in preparation for the launch of Witnessing Life which I’m currently spending my days (and nights) thinking about.

Without further ado, here’s the rundown of how I achieved my goal.

1. Install using Subversion (not gems)

svn checkout svn://typosphere.org/typo/trunk typo

2. DreamHost Setup

You need to configure a subdomain for Typo. Under the DreamHost Control Panel choose “Domains > Manage Domains” on the left hand side. Then configure a subdomain with blog.yourdomain.com as the domain, FastCGI enabled and a directory of home/username/typo/public. Save your settings.

You also need to create a database where typo is going to store your posts, etc. I’m using MySQL. Under “Goodies > Manage MySQL” you can create a new database, for instance “typo_db” with a username of typo and a subdomain of mysql.yourdomain.com Create an original and strong password and save it for the next step.

It’s going to take a 10 or so minutes for your new subdomains to propagate on the dreamhost DNS servers, and some of the following steps to work properly (namely for typo to find the database, since DreamHost wont accept localhost for a MySQL server). If you haven’t already had that sandwhich, now might be the time.

3. Configuring Typo

The next step is to configure typo to work with your account. Enter the following in the command line:

cd ~/typo
pico config/database.yml.example

This is an example version of the database.yml for mysql. You want to edit this file to match the settings you just created.

Under the ‘login’ callout, change host to mysql.yourdomain.com, change the username to typo (or whatever you set the mysql user to be in step 2) and enter the strong password from the end of step two where it says password.

You also need to change the name of the database (marked database) under each of the three application modes (development, test, production) to your newly created db, typo_db.

Type ‘Control-X’ to exit. When it prompts you to “save modified buffer”, type Y. Pico will then prompt you for a name for the changed file. Remove the .example from the end of the filename, naming the file database.yml.

Next, at the command line, type:

pico config/environment.rb

On the fifth line, uncomment the line that reads ‘ENV[‘RAILS_ENV’] = ‘production’ (remove the ‘#’ from before the line). It should look like this:

This will force rails into production mode for DreamHost. When complete, type ‘Control-X’ to exit and save the file with the same name.

Finally, back at the command line, type:

rake migrate RAILS_ENV=production

This will take a while, but it will get the database schema configured on the typo_db MySQL database.

4. DreamHost Tweaking

If everything has been going ok so far, there’s just a few more things to do for you to be Typo Powered.

We need to edit a couple more documents:

pico public/dispatch.fcgi

First of all, change the top line that reads ’#!/usr/bin/env ruby’ to ‘#!/usr/bin/ruby’. This, called the “shebang” line, is the path to ruby, and DreamHost’s path is slightly different than the default.

Next, scroll down to the bottom of the document and look for the line that reads ‘require fcgi_handler’. Underneath that line, add the following code:

class RailsFCGIHandler
  private
    def frao_handler(signal)
      dispatcher_log :info, "asked to terminate immediately" 
      dispatcher_log :info, "frao handler working its magic!" 
      restart_handler(signal)
    end
    alias_method :exit_now_handler, :frao_handler
end

This is a method of dealing with intermittant 500 errors at DreamHost devised by Alex Young. When you’re done, the file should look like this:

Hit ‘Control-X’ and save your changes again. Now we do the same shebang line change to dispatch.rb:

pico public/dispatch.rb

Again, if the top line reads ’#!/usr/bin/env ruby’ change it to ‘#!/usr/bin/ruby’. Close and save.

Finally, we have just a few permissions to set. At the command line:

chmod 755 public
chmod 755 public/dispatch.fcgi
chmod 755 public/dispatch.rb

And you’re done! At this point you should be able to go to blog.yourdomain.com and create your first user. Note that, at first, the response of the system may be a bit sluggish. This is because the first time the controllers are accessed they haven’t yet been cached. You should notice a performance increase quickly through use.

That said, my experiences were based on trial and error and a lot of help from the following:

DreamHost 2.6 Installation on TypoTrac
Official DreamHost Wiki for Typo
Alex Young’s DreamHost 500-error fix