# Mongrel and SSL? **URL:** \ **Category:** Rails\ **Created:** [August 15, 2006, 2:17pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/mongrel-and-ssl/102425 "2006-08-15T14:17:14Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![afg](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/ecc23a/32.png) [@afg](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/afg)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2006, 2:17pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/mongrel-and-ssl/102425/1 "2006-08-15T14:17:14Z")
I have a small intranet app with only 20 or so users. I’m currently using lighttpd w/ssl for production and mongrel for dev. I don’t think Mongrel supports ssl, but what is the easiest front-end to put in front of it? Pound? ## Thanks Greg Greg F. The Norcross Group Forensics for the 21st Century ---
**Author:** ![afg](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/ecc23a/32.png) [@afg](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/afg)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2006, 2:17pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/mongrel-and-ssl/102425/2 "2006-08-15T14:17:49Z")
i’d say apache… known-to-work and stable 2006/8/10, Greg F. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid): > – > Greg F. > The Norcross Group > Forensics for the 21st Century > > * * * > > Rails mailing list > removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid > [http://lists.rubyonrails.org/mailman/listinfo/rails](http://lists.rubyonrails.org/mailman/listinfo/rails) – Michael S. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) [www.stellar-legends.de](http://www.stellar-legends.de) - Weltraum-Browsergame im Alpha-Stadium ---
**Author:** ![afg](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/ecc23a/32.png) [@afg](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/afg)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2006, 2:18pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/mongrel-and-ssl/102425/3 "2006-08-15T14:18:12Z")
On Thu, 2006-08-10 at 16:46 -0400, Greg F. wrote: > I have a small intranet app with only 20 or so users. > > I’m currently using lighttpd w/ssl for production and mongrel for dev. > > I don’t think Mongrel supports ssl, but what is the easiest front-end > to put in front of it? Pound? Both Pound and Pen support SSL. The Pound instructions on the Mongrel site: [http://mongrel.rubyforge.org/docs/pound.html](http://mongrel.rubyforge.org/docs/pound.html) Give instructions for doing SSL setups. You can probably copy the key gen instructions and use Pen as well. – Zed A. Shaw > **[Zed A. shaw](https://zedshaw.com/)** > > Personal essays and writings by Zed A. Shaw. [http://mongrel.rubyforge.org/](http://mongrel.rubyforge.org/) [http://www.railsmachine.com/](http://www.railsmachine.com/) – Need Mongrel support? ---
**Author:** ![afg](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/ecc23a/32.png) [@afg](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/afg)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2006, 2:18pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/mongrel-and-ssl/102425/4 "2006-08-15T14:18:50Z")
Hi Greg – fancy seeing you here! Pound is very easy, but as always it’s probably whatever you’re more comfortable with. Apache setup is, if you’ve done it a few times, not terribly hard either. The line you’ll be using is ProxyPass and apache must be compiled with mod\_proxy for that to work. When you want to proxy-balance between mongrel\_clusters you’ll have to make the jump up to apache 2.1.0 or above (2.2.2 is out and stable) and use mod\_proxy\_balancer Good luck! On 8/10/06, Greg F. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote: > Greg F. > The Norcross Group > Forensics for the 21st Century > > * * * > > Rails mailing list > removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid > [http://lists.rubyonrails.org/mailman/listinfo/rails](http://lists.rubyonrails.org/mailman/listinfo/rails) – Charles Brian Q. self-promotion: [www.seebq.com](http://www.seebq.com) highgroove studios: [www.highgroove.com](http://www.highgroove.com) slingshot hosting: [www.slingshothosting.com](http://www.slingshothosting.com) ---
**Author:** ![afg](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/ecc23a/32.png) [@afg](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/afg)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2006, 2:45pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/mongrel-and-ssl/102425/5 "2006-09-04T14:45:30Z")
Hey Charles, I’m leaning towards pound just because Apache can be a bit of a bear. I’ve used it several times so I’m not afraid of it, but I’m only serving a couple thousand requests a day at most. I’m just looking for the simpleist thing I can use. The little research I’ve done talks about pound in front of a mongrel cluster. That is truly overkill for my needs, but I’m not sure if pound is only designed for load-balancing situations or if it is also designed to just sit in front of a single mongrel instance and just do the SSL encryption/decryption that I need. FYI: I would stick with lighttpd, but for some reason after a recent upgrade from SuSE 10 to 10.1 it no longer autostarts at bootup. Rather than troubleshoot that, I thought I would move to Mongrel for production. Greg guess my qOn 8/11/06, Charles Brian Q. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote: > make the jump up to apache 2.1.0 or above (2.2.2 is out and stable) > > > I don’t think Mongrel supports ssl, but what is the easiest front-end > > removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid > > Rails mailing list > > removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid > > [http://lists.rubyonrails.org/mailman/listinfo/rails](http://lists.rubyonrails.org/mailman/listinfo/rails) – Greg F. The Norcross Group Forensics for the 21st Century ---
**Author:** ![afg](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/ecc23a/32.png) [@afg](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/afg)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2006, 5:50pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/mongrel-and-ssl/102425/6 "2006-09-05T17:50:36Z")
On Fri, 2006-08-11 at 11:27 -0400, Greg F. wrote: > The little research I’ve done talks about pound in front of a mongrel > cluster. That is truly overkill for my needs, but I’m not sure if > pound is only designed for load-balancing situations or if it is also > designed to just sit in front of a single mongrel instance and just do > the SSL encryption/decryption that I need. No, Pound can be used for just SSL. The additional advantage is when you have to add an extra Mongrel you just increase a number in mongrel\_cluster and add one more backend line in your pound config then restart. _That’s_ scalability. Start small, expand as you need. – Zed A. Shaw > **[Zed A. shaw](https://zedshaw.com/)** > > Personal essays and writings by Zed A. Shaw. [http://mongrel.rubyforge.org/](http://mongrel.rubyforge.org/) [http://www.railsmachine.com/](http://www.railsmachine.com/) – Need Mongrel support? ---
**Author:** ![afg](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/ecc23a/32.png) [@afg](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/afg)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2006, 5:50pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/mongrel-and-ssl/102425/7 "2006-09-05T17:50:37Z")
Thanks Zed, I will try to get that working tomorrow. Greg On 8/11/06, Zed S. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote: > mongrel\_cluster and add one more backend line in your pound config then > > * * * > > Rails mailing list > removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid > [http://lists.rubyonrails.org/mailman/listinfo/rails](http://lists.rubyonrails.org/mailman/listinfo/rails) – Greg F. The Norcross Group Forensics for the 21st Century ---
**Author:** ![afg](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/ecc23a/32.png) [@afg](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/afg)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2006, 2:45pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/mongrel-and-ssl/102425/8 "2006-09-04T14:45:27Z")
On Aug 11, 2006, at 7:32 AM, Charles Brian Q. wrote: > When you want to proxy-balance between mongrel\_clusters you’ll have to > make the jump up to apache 2.1.0 or above (2.2.2 is out and stable) > and use mod\_proxy\_balancer 2.2.3 is out and stable, too. 🙂 – – Tom M.