the real Nate Clark

Log In Using SSH

I use PuTTY for all of my SSH needs. Fire it up and connect to your domain using SSH. After you enter your password, you’re at your home directory (replace nateclark here with your username). Its worth mentioning that you should log in with the same username that your web application runs as (whatever you set in the DreamHost control panel when creating your domain).

[/home/nateclark]$ 

Create a Directory for Compiled Packages and Gems

To keep things neat, I created a directory called .packages under my home directory for any compiled packages. You could download and compile stuff right in your home directory, but that could quickly get cluttered. The . in front of the directory name makes it a hidden directory, so it won’t be listed in a regular ls command. You have to use ls -a to list all directories including hidden ones.

In my ~/.packages directory, I currently have installed my own versions of Ruby 1.8.6, Trac 0.10, Python 2.4.3, ImageMagick 6.3.0, Subversion 1.3.2 and a few other smaller things.

I also have a ~/.gems directory to store all of my own gems.

Set Up Your Paths

Ok, this is the important part—your path variables tell the shell where to look for executables and gems. We’ll set these up in your ~/.bashrc file, which is executed by bash for non-login shells. For regular login shells, you want to use the same path variables, and ~/.bash_profile sets this up. I’ve chosen to source ~/.bashrc at the end of ~/.bash_profile. For Linux newbies, ~ is a shortcut for your home directory.

My ~/.bash_profile looks like this:

# ~/.bash_profile: executed by bash(1) for login shells.

umask 002
PS1='[\h:$PWD]$ '
alias ll="ls -l" 
EDITOR="/usr/bin/vim" 
. .bashrc

And my .bashrc looks like this:

# ~/.bashrc: executed by bash(1) for non-login shells.

export TZ=EST5EDT # Sets my timezone to Eastern U.S. time
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH="$HOME/.packages/lib" 
export PATH="$HOME/.packages/bin:$HOME/.gems/bin:${PATH}" 
export GEM_HOME=$HOME/.gems
export GEM_PATH="$GEM_HOME:/usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8" 

NOTE: Some people (including me) have had problems with Dreamhost’s shared gems conflicting with gems that you install locally. To force your environment to use ONLY your local gems and not the Dreamhost managed gems at all, change the last line above to:

export GEM_PATH="$GEM_HOME:/usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8" 

Now that these paths are set, simply log out and log in again to get them to work. Or, you can just source the file at the prompt:

. ~/.bash_profile

To test if it worked, just echo your path. You should see something like this:

$ echo $PATH
  > /home/nateclark/.packages/bin:/home/nateclark/.gems/bin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/bin/X11:/usr/games
$ echo $GEM_PATH
  > /home/nateclark/.gems:/usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8

The paths that point to your directories are listed first, and then the DreamHost shared location is next. Sweet.

Configure Your Rails Environment

In your Rails applications, you’ll also have to tell Rails where to look for your gems. Add this line to the top of your config/environment.rb, file:

ENV['GEM_PATH'] = '/home/nateclark/.gems:/usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8'

Install Your Packages

Ok, now you’re ready to install your packages into your ~/.packages directory. You can do this just like you would manually compile a package normally, with the only difference that you need to use the --prefix=$HOME/.packages option when you configure. For example, here’s how I installed Ruby 1.8.6:

First, install readline. This is required if you ever want to use script/console on your Dreamhosted rails app.

$ cd ~/.packages
$ wget ftp://ftp.cwru.edu/pub/bash/readline-5.2.tar.gz
$ tar zxvf readline-5.2.tar.gz
$ cd readline-5.2
$ ./configure --prefix=$HOME/.packages
$ make
$ make install

Now, download and compile the latest version of Ruby:

$ cd ~/packages
$ wget ftp://ftp.ruby-lang.org/pub/ruby/ruby-1.8.6.tar.gz
$ tar zxvf ruby-1.8.6.tar.gz
$ cd ruby-1.8.6
$ ./configure --prefix=$HOME/.packages --with-readline-dir=$HOME/.packages
$ make
$ make install

Occasionally, Dreamhost will kill a process that is using a lot of CPU or memory and would be bogging down the server. A few times, they have killed my make command. If this happens, just run it again until it completes successfully.

Then, make sure you’re actually using the new version:

$ which ruby
  > /home/nateclark/packages/bin/ruby
$ ruby -v 
  > ruby 1.8.6 (2007-03-13 patchlevel 0) [i686-linux]

Update: Some of you had problems with gem. That’s cause I left out the part about installing rubygems. Oops.

$ cd ~/.packages
$ wget http://rubyforge.org/frs/download.php/20989/rubygems-0.9.4.tgz
$ tar zxvf rubygems-0.9.4.tgz
$ cd rubygems-0.9.4
$ ruby setup.rb config --prefix=$HOME/.packages
$ ruby setup.rb setup
$ ruby setup.rb install

Install Your Gems

Installing gems is just as simple as always. Since your $GEM_HOME is set, all your gems will go into the directory that you specified. For example, install your own version of Rails:

$ gem install rails --include-dependencies

And make sure that you’re using the right one:

$ which rails
  > /home/nateclark/.gems/bin/rails

Thats it! Now you can manage your own versions of pretty much any package, library or gem. Of course with that comes the responsibility of keeping everything patched and up to date.

Let me know if I’ve missed anything. Good luck.