Apache2 on red hat linux need help anyone

Rails
1

I’ve poured over many docs online and thought it would be wonderful to
get RoR running in 15 minutes. Well after 15 hours, I’m completely
stuck and ready to give up on RoR. I’m hoping somebody can give me
some guidance. I’ve pulled out my hair and am bald like others who
have tried to get RoR running without any luck.

When I run http://71.159.224.53/say/hello, I keep get application error:

Change this error message for exceptions thrown outside of an action
(like in Dispatcher setups or broken Ruby code) in public/500.html

I’m trying to get RoR running on Apache2 on Red Hat Enterprise 4. By
the way if Apache2 is no good with RoR, I can switch to Apache 1.3. In
any case, I have the standard set up as you can see at the very bottom
of this post.

The interesting thing is that I output the rewrite.log and it shows
that for some reason RoR is trying to access:

/var/www/rails/demo/public/say/hello.html/hello → say/hello.html/hello

And it fails when it doesn’t find this file:

/var/www/rails/demo/public/say/hello.html’ pattern=‘!-f’ => matched

However, my “say” controller is located here:

/var/www/rails/demo/app/controllers/say_controller.rb

Here is the output of the rewrite log. Something is not write here:

68.111.180.250 - - [24/Jun/2006:02:22:29 --0700]
[71.159.224.53/sid#81d3230][rid#81e2a98/initial] (2) init rewrite
engine with requested uri /say/hello
68.111.180.250 - - [24/Jun/2006:02:22:29 --0700]
[71.159.224.53/sid#81d3230][rid#81e2a98/initial] (1) pass through
/say/hello
68.111.180.250 - - [24/Jun/2006:02:22:29 --0700]
[71.159.224.53/sid#81d3230][rid#81e2a98/initial] (3) [per-dir
/var/www/rails/demo/public/] add path info postfix:
/var/www/rails/demo/public/say → /var/www/rails/demo/public/say/hello
68.111.180.250 - - [24/Jun/2006:02:22:29 --0700]
[71.159.224.53/sid#81d3230][rid#81e2a98/initial] (3) [per-dir
/var/www/rails/demo/public/] strip per-dir prefix:
/var/www/rails/demo/public/say/hello → say/hello
68.111.180.250 - - [24/Jun/2006:02:22:29 --0700]
[71.159.224.53/sid#81d3230][rid#81e2a98/initial] (3) [per-dir
/var/www/rails/demo/public/] applying pattern ‘^$’ to uri ‘say/hello’
68.111.180.250 - - [24/Jun/2006:02:22:29 --0700]
[71.159.224.53/sid#81d3230][rid#81e2a98/initial] (3) [per-dir
/var/www/rails/demo/public/] add path info postfix:
/var/www/rails/demo/public/say → /var/www/rails/demo/public/say/hello
68.111.180.250 - - [24/Jun/2006:02:22:29 --0700]
[71.159.224.53/sid#81d3230][rid#81e2a98/initial] (3) [per-dir
/var/www/rails/demo/public/] strip per-dir prefix:
/var/www/rails/demo/public/say/hello → say/hello
68.111.180.250 - - [24/Jun/2006:02:22:29 --0700]
[71.159.224.53/sid#81d3230][rid#81e2a98/initial] (3) [per-dir
/var/www/rails/demo/public/] applying pattern ‘^([^.]+)$’ to uri
‘say/hello’
68.111.180.250 - - [24/Jun/2006:02:22:29 --0700]
[71.159.224.53/sid#81d3230][rid#81e2a98/initial] (2) [per-dir
/var/www/rails/demo/public/] rewrite say/hello → say/hello.html
68.111.180.250 - - [24/Jun/2006:02:22:29 --0700]
[71.159.224.53/sid#81d3230][rid#81e2a98/initial] (3) [per-dir
/var/www/rails/demo/public/] add per-dir prefix: say/hello.html →
/var/www/rails/demo/public/say/hello.html
68.111.180.250 - - [24/Jun/2006:02:22:29 --0700]
[71.159.224.53/sid#81d3230][rid#81e2a98/initial] (3) [per-dir
/var/www/rails/demo/public/] add path info postfix:
/var/www/rails/demo/public/say/hello.html →
/var/www/rails/demo/public/say/hello.html/hello
68.111.180.250 - - [24/Jun/2006:02:22:29 --0700]
[71.159.224.53/sid#81d3230][rid#81e2a98/initial] (3) [per-dir
/var/www/rails/demo/public/] strip per-dir prefix:
/var/www/rails/demo/public/say/hello.html/hello → say/hello.html/hello
68.111.180.250 - - [24/Jun/2006:02:22:29 --0700]
[71.159.224.53/sid#81d3230][rid#81e2a98/initial] (3) [per-dir
/var/www/rails/demo/public/] applying pattern ‘^(.*)$’ to uri
‘say/hello.html/hello’
68.111.180.250 - - [24/Jun/2006:02:22:29 --0700]
[71.159.224.53/sid#81d3230][rid#81e2a98/initial] (4) RewriteCond:
input=‘/var/www/rails/demo/public/say/hello.html’ pattern=‘!-f’ =>
matched
68.111.180.250 - - [24/Jun/2006:02:22:29 --0700]
[71.159.224.53/sid#81d3230][rid#81e2a98/initial] (2)…

----------------- APACHE2 CONF VIRTUAL HOST --------------------------
NameVirtualHost 71.159.224.53

<VirtualHost 71.159.224.53>
ServerAdmin [email protected]
DocumentRoot /var/www/rails/demo/public
#ServerName www.example.com
ErrorLog /var/log/httpd/rail-error_log
CustomLog /var/log/httpd/rail-access_log common

Options Indexes ExecCGI FollowSymLinks

 RewriteEngine On
 RewriteLog "/var/log/httpd/rewrite.log"
 RewriteLogLevel 4

------------------------ .htaccess --------------------------------

General Apache options

AddHandler fastcgi-script .fcgi
AddHandler cgi-script .cgi
Options +FollowSymLinks +ExecCGI

RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^$ index.html [QSA]
RewriteRule ^([^.]+)$ $1.html [QSA]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ dispatch.cgi [QSA,L]

–
[email protected]
Position Research, Inc.
Search engine results by research
tel: (760) 480-8291 fax: (760) 480-8271
www.PositionResearch.com

2

First things first:

Change the last line of your .htaccess to dispatch.fcgi. Right now it’s
going to use dispatch.cgi wich defeats the purpose of having fcgi
installed for faster performance.

I don’t have an immediate answer for your stated problem though. Sorry.

Gil Vidals wrote:

------------------------ .htaccess --------------------------------

General Apache options

AddHandler fastcgi-script .fcgi
AddHandler cgi-script .cgi
Options +FollowSymLinks +ExecCGI

RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^$ index.html [QSA]
RewriteRule ^([^.]+)$ $1.html [QSA]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ dispatch.cgi [QSA,L]

–
[email protected]
Position Research, Inc.
Search engine results by research
tel: (760) 480-8291 fax: (760) 480-8271
www.PositionResearch.com

3

I struggled mightily with Apache2/FastCGI on RHEL3 when I first began
deploying RoR apps. It always … sort of worked. Things got really
hairy when I tried integrating ImageMagick/RMagick. Finally I switched
to Lighttpd to serve the app and proxy through Apache. It’s far less
painful - I recommend this route. Also, your dev environment will be
closer to your production enevironment, which is handy.

4

+1 for Lighty. The configuration takes like 5 simple lines.

However, if you have simple needs, Mongrel would do a good job of
serving your app.

Did you just recently start with Rails? If so, you really shouldn’t even
be worrying about a production server like Apache yet. Stick with
WEBrick until you really have something that needs a faster server.

5

Thank you for your help! Will RoR play well with Apache 1.3 in the
RHEL world? I’d hat to develop a great RoR app and then when it
finally needs speak, fail on the Apache installation! That would make
me sick.

You mentioned proxying through Apache. I’m very curious about this.
Can you elaborate a little. What was the purpose of proxying through
Apache? Wasn’t Lighttpd enough??

Gil

–
[email protected]
Position Research, Inc.
Search engine results by research
tel: (760) 480-8291 fax: (760) 480-8271
www.PositionResearch.com

Quoting Lance D. [email protected]:

6

Yeah, “Lighty” is the easy way to say “Lighttpd” conversationally.
Seriously, ever try to say it out loud?

Apache 1.3 is just aging. It’s more difficult to use RoR’s routing
system with Apache for some reason. I’ve never dug that far into it
because I light Lighty so much. WAY simpler syntax for everything in my
opinion.

7

By Lighty, do you mean Lighttpd? I’m completely new to RoR and to all
these new web servers. I’m use to using Apache 1.3 and it seems that
RoR doesn’t work well with Apache, which seems odd to me as Apache is
the industry standard.

Gil

–
[email protected]
Position Research, Inc.
Search engine results by research
tel: (760) 480-8291 fax: (760) 480-8271
www.PositionResearch.com

Quoting Bryan D. [email protected]: