I'm trying to use Node.js as the JavaScript runtime for my Rails application. I'm using the Phusion Passenger module with Nginx as my web server on Ubuntu 12.0.4. Every time I visit my Rails application I get an error page that appears to be generated from Passenger stating that ExecJS can't find a JavaScript runtime. I've seen numerous posts on here that either suggest that you install Node--which I have done via sudo apt-get install node
--or suggest using therubyracer + execjs in your Gemfile. That latter solution does in fact work, but I would really prefer to use Node, especially since Heroku has stated that they discourage the use of therubyracer do to the fact that it uses a "very large amount of memory".
I ran into a tutorial which suggests that the user that my web server runs as may not have Node in it's path. I checked this out by running sudo -u www-data which node
and it returns /usr/bin/node
. The user www-data is the user that nginx runs as, and the user that owns all the files in my Rails application. I've also looked at /etc/environment
, and I can see that /usr/bin
is in the system-wide path. Running sudo -u www-data node -v
also returns the Node version as expected, so it is executable.
When I run RAILS_ENV=production bundle exec rake assets:precompile
I don't get any errors. When I load ExecJS into an interactive session with IRB I'm able to get it to return a valid runtime. I've also tried explicitly adding EXECJS_RUNTIME=Node
as an environment variable, but then it just says "Node.js (V8) runtime is not available" instead. I've tried many things and I just can't get this to work!
Here's the error I get when I visit my Rails app. When I look at the Nginx log file I see pretty much the same thing.
Web application could not be started Could not find a JavaScript runtime. See https://github.com/sstephenson/execjs for a list of available runtimes. (ExecJS::RuntimeUnavailable) /usr/lib/ruby/gems/2.1.0/gems/execjs-2.0.2/lib/execjs/runtimes.rb:51:in `autodetect' /usr/lib/ruby/gems/2.1.0/gems/execjs-2.0.2/lib/execjs.rb:5:in `<module:ExecJS>' /usr/lib/ruby/gems/2.1.0/gems/execjs-2.0.2/lib/execjs.rb:4:in `<top (required)>' /usr/lib/ruby/gems/2.1.0/gems/uglifier-2.5.0/lib/uglifier.rb:3:in `require' /usr/lib/ruby/gems/2.1.0/gems/uglifier-2.5.0/lib/uglifier.rb:3:in `<top (required)>' /usr/lib/ruby/gems/2.1.0/gems/bundler-1.6.1/lib/bundler/runtime.rb:76:in `require' /usr/lib/ruby/gems/2.1.0/gems/bundler-1.6.1/lib/bundler/runtime.rb:76:in `block (2 levels) in require' /usr/lib/ruby/gems/2.1.0/gems/bundler-1.6.1/lib/bundler/runtime.rb:72:in `each' /usr/lib/ruby/gems/2.1.0/gems/bundler-1.6.1/lib/bundler/runtime.rb:72:in `block in require' /usr/lib/ruby/gems/2.1.0/gems/bundler-1.6.1/lib/bundler/runtime.rb:61:in `each' /usr/lib/ruby/gems/2.1.0/gems/bundler-1.6.1/lib/bundler/runtime.rb:61:in `require' /usr/lib/ruby/gems/2.1.0/gems/bundler-1.6.1/lib/bundler.rb:132:in `require' /srv/www/app/config/application.rb:7:in `<top (required)>' /srv/www/app/config/environment.rb:2:in `require' /srv/www/app/config/environment.rb:2:in `<top (required)>' config.ru:3:in `require' config.ru:3:in `block in <main>' /usr/lib/ruby/gems/2.1.0/gems/rack-1.5.2/lib/rack/builder.rb:55:in `instance_eval' /usr/lib/ruby/gems/2.1.0/gems/rack-1.5.2/lib/rack/builder.rb:55:in `initialize' config.ru:1:in `new' config.ru:1:in `<main>' /usr/share/passenger/helper-scripts/rack-preloader.rb:112:in `eval' /usr/share/passenger/helper-scripts/rack-preloader.rb:112:in `preload_app' /usr/share/passenger/helper-scripts/rack-preloader.rb:158:in `<module:App>' /usr/share/passenger/helper-scripts/rack-preloader.rb:29:in `<module:PhusionPassenger>' /usr/share/passenger/helper-scripts/rack-preloader.rb:28:in `<main>'