Running RoR in isolation on Ubuntu VPS

Question

Apologies for these stupid questions (please explain why if you're going to downvote).

I have a site running on a LAMP stack on a Linode Ubuntu VPS and want to learn rails on the remote server without causing disruption to the site currently at mydomain.com.

1) Can I install rails the normal way (as I would on my own PC), and have it not effect the site that is currently up?

2) If a generate an app skeleton after installation, after starting the rails server, how can I navigate the default view?

Answer 1

1) Your test Rails app and the production PHP app can co-exist (hopefully you know your way around Linux) on the same server without interfering with each other. However, I would not recommend this. Bad idea to be trying experimental stuff on production VMs/VPSs. You are better off spooling a test VPS for Rails or better still use VirtualBox VMs on your local machine.

2) Rails apps start on port 3000 by default. So on the VPS, you can reach the Rails app root at http://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:3000 (replace the x's with your VPS's IP addr.)