I wrote a couple similar ones (http://blog.fiveruns.com/search?q=slicehost) using mongrel, Thin and nginx, but I like your Passenger choice, especially passing the yes argument to keep it automatic.

Thanks for publishing this.
Mark

A few comments:

You could remove the sudo before each command and throw a check at the top to see whether the script is being run as root, something like:

if [ "$(whoami)" != "root" ]; then
  echo "You need to be root to run this!"
  exit 2
fi

Then you’d just have to call the script with sudo.

Brightbox actually run an ubuntu-ruby-backports repo that does all the heavy lifting for you Passenger-wise (though they don’t yet package REE).

You can find more info on how to add their repo to your system at https://launchpad.net/~ubuntu-ruby-backports/+archive

If you’re looking at extending your automation further, you might want to consider using something like Puppet:

http://puppet.reductivelabs.com/

It lets you describe your setup in high level terms that can easily be applied to different versions of Linux/Unix.

I wrote about my personal experiences with configuring systems with scripts on my blog here:

http://holmwood.id.au/~lindsay/2008/11/04/why-scripting-your-server-install-is-a-bad-idea/

I’m going to put together some sysadmin screencasts sometime early in the new year which will serve as an introduction to sysadmin for Ruby web developers.

thanks!