Category Archives: Howto

How to read one non-blocking key press in Ruby

During the development of a simple command line game in Ruby, I wanted to check if the player has pressed a given key in a non-blocking and buffered way. That is: If no key was pressed, don’t wait for one … Continue reading

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Rails cluster with Ruby load balancer using Docker

Lately I discovered Docker. I made a quick presentation on it for the rivierarb meetup of february 2014 (slides available). As an example of Docker’s usage, I decided to make something cool: a Rails cluster, with a Ruby load balancer … Continue reading

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Install Ruby 1.9.3 on a shared hosting non root

I’ve got through a bit of a hurdle to get Ruby 1.9.3 installed on my shared host. My host is PlanetHoster, but this walkthrough should work with any host giving you a decent development suite (gcc, ld, make…), like 1and1, … Continue reading

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Monitor your systems using Monit on shared hosts non-root – Example with Rails3/Capistrano

Do you know Monit? You definitely should. This is a high-quality and mature Open Source project, very well documented, that can monitor all your system resources (global and process-based). It is lightweight, efficient, can take corrective actions (restart servers…), provides … Continue reading

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Deploy Rails 3 Unicorn applications using Capistrano on a shared web host non-root

In my struggle to have complete Rails3 environments setup in shared web hosts, the deployment step was missing. Lately I managed to deploy Rails3 Unicorn applications using Capistrano on a shared web host, as a non-root user with very limited … Continue reading

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Installing Rails 3 nginx unicorn on a shared web host non-root

Lately I tried to install a complete Rails 3 nginx unicorn web stack on a shared host without root privileges, in my user home directory. Ruby and Rails3 setup nginx setup Unicorn setup Unicorn setup with nginx In this process, … Continue reading

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How to install custom ROM on Asus TF300TG Transformer Pad

Lately, I received a TF300TG Asus Transformer Pad, shipping with a stock Asus JellyBean (Android 4.1.1) OS. It is awesome, reactive, playful, efficient, has 3G connectivity with a SIM card slot… but does not have broadband telephony feature! So I … Continue reading

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rb_iterate replaced by rb_block_call API between Ruby 1.8 and 1.9

You may have noticed that some Ruby libraries using C extensions were suddenly having core dumps when compiled using Ruby 1.9, whereas compiling with Ruby 1.8 got no problems. A good culprit might be the usage of rb_iterate method in … Continue reading

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Migrating big applications from Rails 2 to Rails 3

Today will have a rather long and technical post, focused on all the steps needed for migrating big applications from Rails 2 to Rails 3. First question: why bother? Rails 2 is great, but Rails 3 is awesome. Apart from … Continue reading

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The Ruby C API – Basics

In my 2 previous posts, we saw how to write C extensions, and how to package them. Now time has come to see a little bit of the Ruby C API. This post will deal with the basics, next ones … Continue reading

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