Quick guide to install Shiny Server (Open Source Edition)

Shiny Server (https://www.rstudio.com/products/shiny/shiny-server/) is a server to put Shiny (http://shiny.rstudio.com/) applications or interactive documents available over the web. The official documentation seems quite confusing to me, so I want to share this quick tutorial for people approaching it for the first time.
The procedure explained in this post has been tested and replicated on several Linux Red Hat Servers 6.6+ 64-bit, but it should work on any Linux distribution that allows RPM management. The overall procedure could be of course automated, but for better understanding of this tutorial I am going to describe any manual step involved.

Installation
Connect to your Linux server as root and download the latest RPM for your specific architecture:

wget https://download3.rstudio.org/centos5.9/x86_64/shiny-server-1.4.0.721-rh5-x86_64.rpm

and then install it using yum:

yum install --nogpgcheck shiny-server-1.4.0.721-rh5-x86_64.rpm

At the end of the installation process you should see an output like this:

Downloading Packages:
Running rpm_check_debug
Running Transaction Test
Transaction Test Succeeded
Running Transaction
  Installing : shiny-server-1.4.0.721-1.x86_64                                                                                                                 1/1
Creating group shiny
Creating user shiny
shiny-server start/running, process 56680
  Verifying  : shiny-server-1.4.0.721-1.x86_64                                                                                                                 1/1

Installed:
  shiny-server.x86_64 0:1.4.0.721-1

The server will be installed in the /srv/shiny-server/ directory. It is installed as a service and it is up and running at the end of the installation. The installer creates also a new dedicated user called shiny.

R installation.
Shiny is based on R. So now you need to install the R environment (compiling its source code) for the shiny user. Switch to this user:

su shiny

and download the latest R source code:

wget http://ftp.heanet.ie/mirrors/cran.r-project.org/src/base/R-3/R-3.2.1.tar.gz

Extract the downloaded archive:

tar xzvf R-3.2.1.tar.gz

Move to the source code directory and start the configuration for the particular system where you're installing on:

cd R-3.2.1
./configure

and finally build it:

make

At the end of the build process test that it was really successful:

make check

Shiny and R Markdown installation.
Shiny framework and R Markdown come as R packages. Execute the R console as shiny user:

/home/shiny/R-3.2.1/bin/R

and install them the usual way for the R packages:

install.packages("shiny")
install.packages("rmarkdown")

The two commands above download, build and install their dependencies as well.

Exit the R console at the end:

q()

Configuration.
In order to have the Shiny Server using the proper R environment you need to specify it in the upstart configuration file. Open it in editing:

su root
nano /etc/init/shiny-server.conf

and add the following variable:

env R=/home/shiny/R-3.2.1/bin/R

Stop and start the server:
stop shiny-server
start shiny-server

Check the it is up and running opening the following page in a web browser:

http://<hostname>:3838/

You should see a static HTML page like this:

hosting a Shiny demo web application on the upper right corner and a R markdown demo document on the lower right corner:






If the port 3838 (default for the Shiny Server) is busy on your system you could change it editing the server general configuration file /etc/shiny-server/shiny-server.conf