Installing Passenger + Nginx on Red Hat 8 / CentOS 8
Step 1: enable EPEL
The instructions differ depending on whether you are on Red Hat or CentOS. The second step is only necessary on Red Hat.
Step 1: install EPEL package
sudo yum install -y yum-utils
sudo yum install -y https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/epel-release-latest-$(< /etc/redhat-release tr -dc '0-9.'|cut -d \. -f1).noarch.rpm
sudo yum-config-manager --enable epel
sudo yum clean all && sudo yum update -y
Step 2 (RHEL only): enable the optional repository
Enable the optional repository (rhel-8-server-optional-rpms). This can be done by enabling the RHEL optional subchannel for RHN-Classic. For certificate-based subscriptions see Red Hat Subscription Management Guide. The following commands may be helpful, but are not thoroughly tested.
sudo subscription-manager register --username $RHN_USERNAME --password $RHN_PASSWORD --auto-attach
sudo subscription-manager repos --enable rhel-8-server-optional-rpms
Step 2: repair potential system issues
These commands will fix common issues that prevent yum from installing Passenger
# Ensure curl and nss/openssl are sufficiently up-to-date to talk to the repo
sudo yum update -y
date
# if the output of date is wrong, please follow these instructions to install ntp
sudo yum install -y ntp
sudo chkconfig ntpd on
sudo ntpdate pool.ntp.org
sudo service ntpd start
Step 3: install Passenger packages
These commands will install Passenger dynamic Nginx module through Phusion's YUM repository.
If you want to use our packaged Nginx module, you must use your distro's provided Nginx package. If for example you have the repo provided by NGINX setup, you will instead need to compile a dynamic module compatible with that Nginx.
# Install various prerequisites
sudo yum install -y curl
# Add our el8 YUM repository
sudo curl --fail -sSLo /etc/yum.repos.d/passenger.repo https://oss-binaries.phusionpassenger.com/yum/definitions/el-passenger.repo
# Install Passenger dynamic Nginx module
sudo yum install -y nginx-mod-http-passenger || sudo yum-config-manager --enable cr && sudo yum install -y nginx-mod-http-passenger
Step 4: restart Nginx
Now that the Passenger Nginx module is installed, restart Nginx to ensure that Passenger is activated:
sudo systemctl restart nginx
Step 5: check installation
After installation, please validate the install by running sudo /usr/bin/passenger-config validate-install. For example:
sudo /usr/bin/passenger-config validate-install
* Checking whether this Phusion Passenger install is in PATH... ✓
* Checking whether there are no other Phusion Passenger installations... ✓
All checks should pass. If any of the checks do not pass, please follow the suggestions on screen.
Finally, check whether Nginx has started the Passenger core processes. Run sudo /usr/sbin/passenger-memory-stats. You should see Nginx processes as well as Passenger processes. For example:
sudo /usr/sbin/passenger-memory-stats
Version: 5.0.8
Date : 2015-05-28 08:46:20 +0200
...
---------- Nginx processes ----------
PID PPID VMSize Private Name
-------------------------------------
12443 4814 60.8 MB 0.2 MB nginx: master process /usr/sbin/nginx
12538 12443 64.9 MB 5.0 MB nginx: worker process
### Processes: 3
### Total private dirty RSS: 5.56 MB
----- Passenger processes ------
PID VMSize Private Name
--------------------------------
12517 83.2 MB 0.6 MB PassengerAgent watchdog
12520 266.0 MB 3.4 MB PassengerAgent server
12531 149.5 MB 1.4 MB PassengerAgent logger
...
If you do not see any Nginx processes or Passenger processes, then you probably have some kind of installation problem or configuration problem. Please refer to the troubleshooting guide.
Step 6: update regularly
Nginx updates, Passenger updates and system updates are delivered through the YUM package manager regularly. You should run the following command regularly to keep them up to date:
sudo yum update
After an update, you should restart Nginx. Doing so will automatically restart Passenger too.
