First Steps

Step 1: Login to your new Boxcar

In your welcome email, you’ll be provided with the login information that you’ll need to connect to your new Boxcar instance.

TODO: add screenshot pointing out the login information in an email

ssh -l root xyz.railsboxcar.com

You’ll use the password that was provided to you in the email. If everything connect, great, we’re ready to move to the next step.

HELP: If you cannot login with the password provided, please contact support.

Step 2: Change your root password

When you receive your new Boxcar login information, the root password is sent to you in clear text through email, which is insecure. We highly encourage you to login to your new Boxcar and change this password immediately. For maximum security you should consider creating a keypair for use in logging in. (TODO: add page with howto’s for pubkey authentication setup) After this is done, nobody will have this password except you. Don’t worry, if you ever need us to reset it, we’ll be able to do this for you and send you a new root password and you can follow this process again.

To change your password, you can use the passwd command.

$ passwd

This command will prompt you to provide your new password and confirm it. After the password is change, we’re ready to move on.

TIP: Always test your new login information in a new terminal (before logging out) to verify that you set it properly. Nobody wants to get locked out of their own Boxcar. ;-)

Step 3: Install required packages

Now that you’re ready to move forward, you’ll want to make sure you have listed out what dependencies your application is relying upon in order to properly run in a production environment. Let’s walk through the following common things that you’ll need to do in order to get your Boxcar ready to host your Rails application.

What database server are you going to use?

Let’s start with the biggest dependency… the database. Take a look at the Database Servers page to install and configure the one(s) that will be needed by your Rails application.

You’ll want to make sure that you install your database server, configure it, add a new user, and create new databases for your new Rails application.

What gems are required by your Rails application?

By default, we install several basic RubyGems for you so that you can focus on your application-specific gems. To see a list of what is currently installed, run the following command.

$ gem list

If you don’t see some of the gems that your application requires, this would be a good time do so.

For more information on installing RubyGems, please consult the documentation.