Frequently Asked Questions
How do I get my Rails app onto my Brightbox?
There are a number of ways, the easiest is to use our Brightbox Capistrano recipes.
How do I get root access on my Brightbox?
Login over SSH as the rails user and run commands using the sudo tool, which asks for your rails user password and then runs the command as root:
sudo /etc/init.d/apache restart
We recommend running each command you need using the sudo command, but if you need to get a root shell to run a number of commands, just run the bash command with sudo
sudo bash
I don't like sudo, how can I login directly as root using ssh?
See the SSH support page for more information on setting up an ssh key for direct root access.
How do I reboot my Brightbox?
Run the following command via ssh to restart your Brightbox machine:
sudo shutdown -r now
Note: We’ll soon have a web-based account admin area where you’ll also be able to reboot your Brightbox machines.
Why does my Brightbox have two network interfaces?
Each Brightbox comes with two virtual network interfaces each one on a separate physical network segment. eth0 is Internet facing and carries your web and remote access traffic. eth1 is a private network and is used to access local services, such as the MySQL and backup servers. Having these separate helps with security and performance. The Brightbox Network page has more details.
How do I access the database servers?
Dedicated MySQL services are available with all Brightbox hosting packages. The MySQL Cluster page has more information on configuring your Rails app to use them.
I can't access a certain port on my Brightbox!
All Brightboxes are protected by our firewall with only a limited set of ports open. If you require additional ports to be opened for your Brightbox, please submit a request with the Help Desk. The Brightbox Network page has more information about the firewalls.
How can I send email from my Brightbox?
All Brightboxes have access to a dedicated smtp relay.
How can I schedule rake tasks to run regularly?
You can configure the Cron daemon to run any commands you like whenever you like.
Can I run PHP on my Brightbox?
By default PHP isn't supported, but you can easily install it. See the PHP documentation for more details.
Can I access or restart my Brightbox via the control panel?
Coming soon.
My Rails app won't restart properly
The most common cause of this is stale Mongrel pid files. You just need to delete the stale mongrel pid files from the log directory.
Stop your app using the stop_mongrel_cluster task.
ssh into your Brightbox and run the command:
rm /home/rails/myappname/current/log/*.pid
Then start up your app again using the start_mongrel_cluster task.
Why do I see six mongrel_rails instances on the process list? I only started two!
Mongrel is partially threaded. It has one thread to manage inbound http connections, one thread to run the Rails application and a third thread to handle large file uploads so that the main Rails thread doesn't block.
What you are seeing on the process list is all these threads due to the way that Linux implements threading (by using 'process cloning'). If you run 'ps uxf' you will see the way the mongrel threads are linked to each other in two distinct sets of three.
So yes it is correct, when you start a mongrel you'll get three processes.
