About the Passenger Status Service

Welcome to the Passenger Status Service. This is a service provided by Phusion for the Passenger application server. This service makes Passenger status reports (the passenger-status tool) work on Heroku.

The problem with Passenger status reports on Heroku

Passenger status reports are gathered by running a the passenger-status tool, which queries a Passenger instance running on the same machine. However, Heroku does not provide SSH access to the servers on which your app is running, so it is not possible to run the passenger-status tool to obtain a status report from Passenger. The heroku console command spawns a one-off dyno instead of granting you access to the running servers, so that doesn't work either.

The Passenger Status Service solves this problem. It works as follows:

• You add a reporting command to your Procfile. This reporting command gathers a status report from the local Heroku server and posts it to the Passenger Status Service.
• You view the status reports through the Passenger Status Service.

Self-hosting guide

This app requires PostgreSQL.

1. Install Ruby 2.2.

2. Install Nginx + Passenger.

3. Create a user passenger_status_service:

   $ sudo adduser passenger_status_service
   $ sudo passwd passenger_status_service
   

4. Clone this repository to '/var/www/passenger_status_service':

   $ sudo mkdir /var/www/passenger_status_service
   $ sudo chown passenger_status_service: /var/www/passenger_status_service
   $ sudo -u passenger_status_service -H git clone git://github.com/phusion/passenger_status_service.git /var/www/passenger_status_service
   $ cd /var/www/passenger_status_service
   

5. Open a shell as passenger_status_service. If you are using RVM:

   $ rvmsudo -u passenger_status_service -H bash
   $ export RAILS_ENV=production
   

   If you are not using RVM:

   $ sudo -u passenger_status_service -H bash
   $ export RAILS_ENV=production
   

6. Create a database, edit database configuration:

   $ cp config/database.yml.example config/database.yml
   $ editor config/database.yml
   

7. Install the gem bundle:

   $ bundle install --without development test --deployment
   

8. Run database migrations, generate assets:

   $ bundle exec rake db:migrate assets:precompile
   

9. Create an admin user:

   $ bundle exec rake admin:create
   Email: ...
   Password: ...
   Confirm password: ...
   Admin user created.
   

10. Generate a secret key:

    $ bundle rake secret

    Take note of the output. You need it in the next step.

11. Add Nginx virtual host. Be sure to substitute the passenger_env_var values with appropriate values.

    server { listen 443; server_name www.yourhost.com; ssl_certificate ...; ssl_certificate_key ...; ssl on; root /var/www/passenger_status_service/public; passenger_enabled on;

       # Fill in an appropriate value for email 'From' fields.
       passenger_env_var MAILER_SENDER yourapp@yourdomain.com;
       # Fill in the root URL of the app.
       passenger_env_var ROOT_URL https://www.yourhost.com;
       # Fill in value of secret key you generated in step 10.
       passenger_env_var SECRET_KEY_BASE ...;
    

    }