newbie question about mongrel

rubyonrails-talk
1

Hi,

I am very new to ruby, rails, and mongrel, so this may not make any sense, but i figured i would ask it anyways.

I have been given the task of determining if rails is a good transition for our company.

While my preliminary tests have been successful (i.e. installing mongrel, deploying a test app, etc), i have to figure out how to run our existing cgi scripts under our new environment.

Previously we were using apache + mod_perl, and my question is do i still need to install mod_perl, or is mongrel optimized to handle perl in a fast fashion?

secondly, how do i run a cgi script when running rails, do i simply put a cgi-bin directory in my public directory under my rails app, or is it more complicated than that (i.e. modifying my httpd.conf file to point somewhere other than rails/mongrel)?

sorry for my lack of understanding of apache+rails+mongrel, but I am learning as i go.

thanks!

2

Previously we were using apache + mod_perl, and my question is do i still need to install mod_perl, or is mongrel optimized to handle perl in a fast fashion?

For this situation you're probably best off continuing to use mod_perl for the perl parts, and proxying the rails parts to mongrel instances.

secondly, how do i run a cgi script when running rails, do i simply put a cgi-bin directory in my public directory under my rails app, or is it more complicated than that (i.e. modifying my httpd.conf file to point somewhere other than rails/mongrel)?

If you're using Apache then the perl-based things don't need to be in the rails directory at all -- use the Apache configuration to tell Apache where the cgi (or mod_perl) scripts are and point the rest over to the proxy that talks to the mongrel servers.

-faisal

3

Hi Faisal,

so I took your advice, I decided to use mod_perl and mongrel together, and I installed mod perl, and i ran it (without mongrel, and everything works fine),

then i followed the following tutorial: http://blog.gwikzone.org/articles/2006/10/02/easy-setup-a-mongrel-cluster-with-apache-2-2-on-mac-os-x to setup a mongrel cluster (im using linux instead of a mac, but it works the same), and I tested it, and rails loaded fine, however, when i went to:

mysite.com/cgi-bin/test.pl

i get a Service Temporary Unavailable problem.

Im assuming the problem is within my httpd.conf file, but I am not that familiar with it. Other than the stuff added in the tutorial above, I have the following cgi-related stuff:

ScriptAlias /cgi-bin/ "/var/www/cgi-bin/"

<Directory "/var/www/cgi-bin">     AllowOverride None     Options None     Order allow,deny     Allow from all </Directory>

I am using apache 2.2.4 and mod_perl 2.0

any help is greatly appreciated. Thanks!