Deployment, rewriting, lighttpd, subdirs

Desired scenario…

http://a.host/ is an existing website.

http://b.host:port/ is running a rails application that we want to
appear at http://a.host/application

a.host and b.host are different physical machines, but on the same local
network.

a.host is running apache, and can proxy requests for /application to
b.host:port

b.host is running lighttpd, and needs to rewrite /application requests
so that the links, form targets, etc. that wind up on a.host are like
http://a.host/application/users/23 rather than just
http://a.host/users/23

So basically…

  • Is there an easier way to accomplish this?
  • Is there a guide to serving a rails app out of a subdir using
    lighttpd?

Thanks,
-Matt