It’s no secret that running a Ruby on Rails application on a shared Dreamhost account is rather aggravating, especially if you’re new to Rails.
Dreamhost handles rails applications differently than a dedicated rails host would, and because of this, it alters the process of development and installation of applications. To put it simply, following a step by step Ruby no Rails Guide for beginners will not work out as expected, and may even put your hosting account in jeopardy (more on that in a moment).
To help other newcomers, I’ll list a few difficulties that I have come across and how to solve them, the “dreamhost way”
The Short Story
- DO NOT run the “rails server” command
- Configure /config/boot.rb to properly point to your .gems directory
- use “touch tmp/restart.txt” to retsart your application
Continue for a full explanation and examples.