RoR with apache2 on SuSE

rubyonrails-talk
1

Hi,

Hi, I have an application completed that was built with RoR on windows. So this of course was tested with the webbrick server. I now want to put the project on our apache web server for production. I am having a very hard time getting this accomplished. I followed some of the steps here (because not all of them worked): Peak Obsession And I have managed to get ruby, rails, fcgi, and mod_fcgi all installed and working. I even have a test fcgi script that runs fine. However, I'm just not sure how to reference the project once it is on the server. With webbrick you just say localhost:3000/project_name. But we can't say http://192.168.X.X/project_name on the apache web server because there is no index document. I can hit http://192.168.X.X/project_name/public but when I click on about your applications environment I get this ugly output:

#!/usr/bin/ruby # # You may specify the path to the FastCGI crash log (a log of unhandled # exceptions which forced the FastCGI instance to exit, great for debugging) # and the number of requests to process before running garbage collection. # # By default, the FastCGI crash log is RAILS_ROOT/log/fastcgi.crash.log # and the GC period is nil (turned off). A reasonable number of requests # could range from 10-100 depending on the memory footprint of your app. # # Example: # # Default log path, normal GC behavior. # RailsFCGIHandler.process! # # # Default log path, 50 requests between GC. # RailsFCGIHandler.process! nil, 50 # # # Custom log path, normal GC behavior. # RailsFCGIHandler.process! '/var/log/myapp_fcgi_crash.log' # require File.dirname(__FILE__) + "/../config/environment" require 'fcgi_handler' RailsFCGIHandler.process!

All of the tutorials that I find seem to say the same stuff, has anyone set this up before that could help?

thanks,

Tate

Last time I tried to set up Apache + FastCGI + Rails on SuSE, it didn't work out so hot. Apache 2.2 is the default Apache version, and I couldn't get mod_fcgi and FastCGI installed and compiled happily. The situation may have changed, and someone who actually knows what they are doing could probably get it to work, but I ended up using fcgid, and that's been fine.

If you want details about what I tried or have running now, let me know.

My advice to you -- though, I haven't done this on SuSE -- is to go with mongrel. It's much easier to set up and works great. You'll also need something like pound out in front on a production site.

Scott

2

If you’ve got apache 2.2, it makes a nice load balance in front of mongrel and mongrel_cluster :

http://mongrel.rubyforge.org/docs/apache.html

3

By "running with this framework," you mean Mongrel + Apache? Take a look here: http://mongrel.rubyforge.org/docs/apache.html. I have a similar set-up on a BSD staging server, and I like it. Though I have to say that fcgid has done just fine on a moderately-high traffic site.

Here's a summary of what I've got in production on SuSE 10.1:

apache2 2.2.0 apache2-devel 2.2.0 apache2-prefork 2.2.0 libapr1 1.2.2 libapr1-devel 1.2.2 ruby 1.8.4 FastCGI 2.4.0 FastCGI-devel 2.4.0 apache2-mod_fcgid 1.07 Ruby fcgi 0.8.7 (ruby-fcgi 0.8.6 SuSE packages not installed)

/etc/sysconfig/apache2 APACHE_MODULES: fcgid

/etc/conf.d/mod_fcgid.conf <IfModule mod_fcgid.c>            DefaultInitEnv RAILS_ENV production            SocketPath /tmp/fcgidsock            AddHandler fcgid-script .fcgi            IdleTimeOut 3600            ProcessLifeTime 7200            MaxProcessCount 8            DefaultMaxClassProcessCount 3            IPCConnectTimeout 20            IPCCommTimeout 300 </IfModule>

/etc/vhosts.d/obra.conf <VirtualHost app.obra.org:80>      DocumentRoot /srv/www/rails/obra/current/public      ErrorLog /srv/www/rails/obra/current/log/server.log      UseCanonicalName On      <Directory "/srv/www/rails/obra">          Options ExecCGI FollowSymLinks          AllowOverride All          Allow from all          Order allow,deny      </Directory> </VirtualHost>

This is what I had before with Apache 2.0 and SuSE 10.0: /etc/conf.d/mod_fastcgi.conf <IfModule mod_fastcgi.c>     FastCgiIpcDir /tmp/fcgi_ipc/     FastCgiServer /srv/www/rails/obra/current/public/dispatch.fcgi -initial-env RAILS_ENV=production -processes 6 -idle-timeout 60 </IfModule>

BTW, thinking about your original post, does 'RAILS_ROOT/log/fastcgi.crash.log' exist, and is it writable by your Apache user?

Scott

4

The Apache virtual host entry + Rails' routes.rb determine the URL. RAILS_ROOT/public is the root for static content. In your example, http://192.168.1.80 will return the default public/index.html page.

With my example config: <VirtualHost app.obra.org:80>      DocumentRoot /srv/www/rails/obra/current/public      <Directory "/srv/www/rails/obra"> ...      </Directory> </VirtualHost>

routes.rb: map.connect "/schedule/:year/:action", :controller => "schedule"

So, http://app.obra.org/schedule/2006/list gets you to my ScheduleController's list method. If you want to handle requests like http://app.obra.org, see the comments in routes.rb. If you want to set up different Rails projects in their own directories (e.g., http://www.obra.org/test_project/), you'll need to set up Locations in your Apache config.

Scott