Passenger

Just enabling the Passenger module is insufficient for the use of Passenger in production. Passenger should be tunable to better fit the environment in which it is run while being aware of the resources it required.

To this end the Apache passenger module has been modified to apply system wide Passenger tuning declarations to passenger.conf. Declarations specific to a virtual host should be passed through when defining a vhost (e.g. rack_base_uris parameter on the apache::vhost type, check README.md).

Also, general apache module loading parameters can be supplied to enable using a customized passenger module in place of a default-package-based version of the module.

Operating system support and Passenger versions

The most important configuration directive for the Apache Passenger module is PassengerRoot. Its value depends on the Passenger version used (2.x, 3.x or 4.x) and on the operating system package from which the Apache Passenger module is installed.

The following table summarises the current default versions and PassengerRoot settings for the operating systems supported by puppetlabs-apache:

OS Passenger version PassengerRoot
Debian 7 3.0.13 /usr
Debian 8 4.0.53 /usr/lib/ruby/vendor_ruby/phusion_passenger/locations.ini
Ubuntu 12.04 2.2.11 /usr
Ubuntu 14.04 4.0.37 /usr/lib/ruby/vendor_ruby/phusion_passenger/locations.ini
RHEL with EPEL6 3.0.21 /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/passenger-3.0.21

As mentioned in README.md there are no compatible packages available for RHEL/CentOS 5 or RHEL/CentOS 7.

Configuration files and locations on RHEL/CentOS

Notice two important points:

  1. The Passenger version packaged in the EPEL repositories may change over time.
  2. The value of PassengerRoot depends on the Passenger version installed.

To prevent the puppetlabs-apache module from having to keep up with these package versions the Passenger configuration files installed by the packages are left untouched by this module. All configuration is placed in an extra configuration file managed by puppetlabs-apache.

This means '/etc/httpd/conf.d/passenger.conf' is installed by the mod_passenger package and contains correct values for PassengerRoot and PassengerRuby. Puppet will ignore this file. Additional configuration directives as described in the remainder of this document are placed in '/etc/httpd/conf.d/passenger_extra.conf', managed by Puppet.

This pertains only to RHEL/CentOS, not Debian and Ubuntu.

Third-party and custom Passenger packages and versions

The Passenger version distributed by the default OS packages may be too old to be useful. Newer versions may be installed via Gems, from source or from third-party OS packages.

Most notably the Passenger developers officially provide Debian packages for a variety of Debian and Ubuntu releases in the Passenger APT repository. Read more about installing these packages in the offical user guide.

If you install custom Passenger packages and newer version make sure to set the directives PassengerRoot, PassengerRuby and/or PassengerDefaultRuby correctly, or Passenger and Apache will fail to function properly.

For Passenger 4.x packages on Debian and Ubuntu the PassengerRoot directive should almost universally be set to /usr/lib/ruby/vendor_ruby/phusion_passenger/locations.ini.

Parameters for apache::mod::passenger

The following class parameters configure Passenger in a global, server-wide context.

Example:

class { 'apache::mod::passenger':
  passenger_root             => '/usr/lib/ruby/vendor_ruby/phusion_passenger/locations.ini',
  passenger_default_ruby     => '/usr/bin/ruby1.9.3',
  passenger_high_performance => 'on',
  rails_autodetect           => 'off',
  mod_lib_path               => '/usr/lib/apache2/custom_modules',
}

The general form is using the all lower-case version of the configuration directive, with underscores instead of CamelCase.

Parameters used with passenger.conf

If you pass a default value to apache::mod::passenger it will be ignored and not passed through to the configuration file.

passenger_root

The location to the Phusion Passenger root directory. This configuration option is essential to Phusion Passenger, and allows Phusion Passenger to locate its own data files.

The default depends on the Passenger version and the means of installation. See the above section on operating system support, versions and packages for more information.

http://www.modrails.com/documentation/Users%20guide%20Apache.html#_passengerroot_lt_directory_gt

passenger_default_ruby

This option specifies the default Ruby interpreter to use for web apps as well as for all sorts of internal Phusion Passenger helper scripts, e.g. the one used by PassengerPreStart.

This directive was introduced in Passenger 4.0.0 and will not work in versions < 4.x. Do not set this parameter if your Passenger version is older than 4.0.0.

Defaults to undef for all operating systems except Ubuntu 14.04, where it is set to '/usr/bin/ruby'.

http://www.modrails.com/documentation/Users%20guide%20Apache.html#PassengerDefaultRuby

passenger_ruby

This directive is the same as passenger_default_ruby for Passenger versions < 4.x and must be used instead of passenger_default_ruby for such versions.

It makes no sense to set PassengerRuby for Passenger >= 4.x. That directive should only be used to override the value of PassengerDefaultRuby on a non-global context, i.e. in <VirtualHost>, <Directory>, <Location> and so on.

Defaults to /usr/bin/ruby for all supported operating systems except Ubuntu 14.04, where it is set to undef.

http://www.modrails.com/documentation/Users%20guide%20Apache.html#PassengerRuby

passenger_high_performance

Default is off. When turned on Passenger runs in a higher performance mode that can be less compatible with other Apache modules.

http://www.modrails.com/documentation/Users%20guide%20Apache.html#PassengerHighPerformance

passenger_max_pool_size

Sets the maximum number of Passenger application processes that may simultaneously run. The default value is 6.

http://www.modrails.com/documentation/Users%20guide%20Apache.html#_passengermaxpoolsize_lt_integer_gt

passenger_pool_idle_time

The maximum number of seconds a Passenger Application process will be allowed to remain idle before being shut down. The default value is 300.

http://www.modrails.com/documentation/Users%20guide%20Apache.html#PassengerPoolIdleTime

passenger_max_requests

The maximum number of request a Passenger application will process before being restarted. The default value is 0, which indicates that a process will only shut down if the Pool Idle Time (see above) expires.

http://www.modrails.com/documentation/Users%20guide%20Apache.html#PassengerMaxRequests

passenger_stat_throttle_rate

Sets how often Passenger performs file system checks, at most once every x seconds. Default is 0, which means the checks are performed with every request.

http://www.modrails.com/documentation/Users%20guide%20Apache.html#_passengerstatthrottlerate_lt_integer_gt

rack_autodetect

Should Passenger automatically detect if the document root of a virtual host is a Rack application. Not set by default (undef). Note that this directive has been removed in Passenger 4.0.0 and PassengerEnabled should be used instead. Use this directive only on Passenger < 4.x.

http://www.modrails.com/documentation/Users%20guide%20Apache.html#_rackautodetect_lt_on_off_gt

rails_autodetect

Should Passenger automatically detect if the document root of a virtual host is a Rails application. Not set by default (undef). Note that this directive has been removed in Passenger 4.0.0 and PassengerEnabled should be used instead. Use this directive only on Passenger < 4.x.

http://www.modrails.com/documentation/Users%20guide%20Apache.html#_railsautodetect_lt_on_off_gt

passenger_use_global_queue

Allows toggling of PassengerUseGlobalQueue. NOTE: PassengerUseGlobalQueue is the default in Passenger 4.x and the versions >= 4.x have disabled this configuration option altogether. Use with caution.

passenger_app_env

Sets the global default PassengerAppEnv for Passenger applications. Not set by default (undef) and thus defaults to Passenger's built-in value of 'production'. This directive can be overridden in an apache::vhost resource.

https://www.phusionpassenger.com/documentation/Users%20guide%20Apache.html#PassengerAppEnv

Parameters used to load the module

Unlike the tuning parameters specified above, the following parameters are only used when loading customized passenger modules.

mod_package

Allows overriding the default package name used for the passenger module package.

mod_package_ensure

Allows overriding the package installation setting used by puppet when installing the passenger module. The default is 'present'.

mod_id

Allows overriding the value used by apache to identify the passenger module. The default is 'passenger_module'.

mod_lib_path

Allows overriding the directory path used by apache when loading the passenger module. The default is the value of $apache::params::lib_path.

mod_lib

Allows overriding the library file name used by apache when loading the passenger module. The default is 'mod_passenger.so'.

mod_path

Allows overriding the full path to the library file used by apache when loading the passenger module. The default is the concatenation of the mod_lib_path and mod_lib parameters.

Dependencies

RedHat-based systems will need to configure additional package repositories in order to install Passenger, specifically:

Configuration of these repositories is beyond the scope of this module and is left to the user.

Attribution

The Passenger tuning parameters for the apache::mod::passenger Puppet class was modified by Aaron Hicks (hicksa@landcareresearch.co.nz) for work on the NeSI Project and the Tuakiri New Zealand Access Federation as a fork from the PuppetLabs Apache module on GitHub.

  • https://github.com/puppetlabs/puppetlabs-apache
  • https://github.com/nesi/puppetlabs-apache
  • http://www.nesi.org.nz//
  • https://tuakiri.ac.nz/confluence/display/Tuakiri/Home

Copyright and License

Copyright (C) 2012 Puppet Labs Inc

Puppet Labs can be contacted at: info@puppetlabs.com

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at

http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under the License.