# Mongrel + mod\_proxy URL issues **URL:** \ **Category:** Rails\ **Created:** [July 27, 2006, 1:23am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/mongrel-mod-proxy-url-issues/100084 "2006-07-27T01:23:47Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![thekog](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/t/3da27b/32.png) [@thekog](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/thekog)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2006, 1:23am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/mongrel-mod-proxy-url-issues/100084/1 "2006-07-27T01:23:47Z")
We have a Centos server with a number of virtual hosts, and my rails app runs under one of those virtual hosts using mongrel\_rails. The app lives in /home/mydomain/railsapp where /home/mydomain/railsapp/public is the rails root. It runs under mongrel on port 8008, so to get to it users invoke the url [http://www.mydomain.com:8008/](http://www.mydomain.com:8008/) - all is fine to this point. Now I have some users whose firewalls forbid these semantics, so I went and configured apache (v1.3) to have mod\_proxy in an attempt to get the :8008 out of the URLs the user submits. With a simple rule like: ProxyPass / [http://mydomain.com:8008/](http://mydomain.com:8008/) ProxyPassReverse / [http://mydomain.com:8008/](http://mydomain.com:8008/) It works beautifully when the user invokes [http://www.mydomain.com](http://www.mydomain.com). I believe all my paths within the app are relative to the rails root. Now here is the PROBLEM. I cannot use ‘/’ for the proxy since [mydomain.com](http://mydomain.com) needs to work for the website that already predates the rails app, and in fact wants to offer it to it’s users. So I changed the mod\_proxy rules in apache to: ProxyPass /myapp/ [http://mydomain.com:8008/](http://mydomain.com:8008/) ProxyPassReverse /myapp/ [http://mydomain.com:8008/](http://mydomain.com:8008/) I did this in hopes users could specify [http://www.mydomain.com/myapp/](http://www.mydomain.com/myapp/) Well this works but the problem is that all the links I created using the link\_to method do not invoke [http://www.mydomain.com/tourney/controller/etc](http://www.mydomain.com/tourney/controller/etc), the merely are relative hrefs that look like href=“/mycontroller/mymethod/etc” and as a result do not go to the proper pages. How do I fix this? Why is it different when I specify a subdir versus just specifying ‘/’ in my proxy? I have tried using: ActionController::AbstractRequest.relative\_url\_root = “/myapp” and it just does not help. I am extremely confused and tired. I can’t help but feel I’m getting close. It’s taken the last 2 days to get mod\_proxy working. Any help is appreciated. ---
**Author:** ![thekog](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/t/3da27b/32.png) [@thekog](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/thekog)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2006, 11:04am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/mongrel-mod-proxy-url-issues/100084/2 "2006-07-27T11:04:14Z")
Zed- Thanks for the reply – I’ll be happy to try it, but if I have problems how do I get back to the current version? Just do another install? I’ll give it a shot this afternoon. ---
**Author:** ![thekog](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/t/3da27b/32.png) [@thekog](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/thekog)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2006, 8:39am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/mongrel-mod-proxy-url-issues/100084/3 "2006-07-27T08:39:21Z")
On Thu, 2006-07-27 at 01:23 +0200, Mike K. wrote: > ActionController::AbstractRequest.relative\_url\_root = “/myapp” and it > just does not help. I am extremely confused and tired. I can’t help but > feel I’m getting close. It’s taken the last 2 days to get mod\_proxy > working. Any help is appreciated. Try the current mongrel 0.3.13.4 pre-release: sudo gem install mongrel --source=[http://mongrel.rubyforge.org/releases/](http://mongrel.rubyforge.org/releases/) And use the --prefix setting. That’ll do it. Let me know how it works otherwise. I’ve got bugs in the queue to be fixed next week. – 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:** ![thekog](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/t/3da27b/32.png) [@thekog](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/thekog)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2006, 7:29pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/mongrel-mod-proxy-url-issues/100084/4 "2006-07-27T19:29:32Z")
OK Zed I have the latest installed and everything runs fine as before in the basic setup where I just run off [http://www.mydomain.com:8008/](http://www.mydomain.com:8008/) However I am confused as to how to use the URI. If I set the prefix to anything when mongrel starts it says it is listening and available on 0.0.0.0:refix. Should I be using my mod\_proxy rules for dereferencing [http://www.mydomain.com/myapp](http://www.mydomain.com/myapp) into [http://www.mydomain.com:8008/](http://www.mydomain.com:8008/) and still running mongrel on port 8008 as before? If I set the prefix I cannot get to my app at all – I probably am not using it properly. I need some direction. Thanks in advance, Mike p.s. - pls feel free to communiate directly, I have been writing sys s/w for 20+ years. ---
**Author:** ![thekog](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/t/3da27b/32.png) [@thekog](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/thekog)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2006, 3:26pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/mongrel-mod-proxy-url-issues/100084/5 "2006-07-27T15:26:36Z")
On Thu, 2006-07-27 at 11:04 +0200, Mike K. wrote: > Zed- > > Thanks for the reply – I’ll be happy to try it, but if I have problems > how do I get back to the current version? Just do another install? > > I’ll give it a shot this afternoon. Yes, you should be able to do: gem uninstall mongrel And then tell it to uninstall all versions just to clear everything out. Finally, just do: gem install mongrel – 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:** ![thekog](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/t/3da27b/32.png) [@thekog](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/thekog)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2006, 8:34pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/mongrel-mod-proxy-url-issues/100084/6 "2006-07-27T20:34:09Z")
Zed I mad some progress. I disabled all the mod\_proxy business. I took my app which was in /home/mydomain/test with railsroot=/home/mydomain/test/public, and copied the whole tree over to /home/mydomain/public\_html – so now there is /home/mydomain/public\_html/test with the usual rails subdirs under it. If I start up mongrel\_rails start -prefix /test/public I can reference the app by the URL [http://www.mydomain.com/test/public](http://www.mydomain.com/test/public). All my link-to’s are fine. I did find that anywhere in a view where I hand-coded html for an image where I said ![](https://www.ruby-forum.com/images/test.gif) did not work. However if I recoded it to use \<%= image\_tag etc %\> instead it found the images properly. I have one remaining problem - I use file column for images, and everywhere I use image\_tag(url\_for\_file\_column(…)) I am getting the prefix twice. That is the images are assigned to be at [http://www.mydomain.com/test/public/test/public/classname/images/imagenum](http://www.mydomain.com/test/public/test/public/classname/images/imagenum) instead of [http://www.mydomain.com/test/public/classname/images/imagenum](http://www.mydomain.com/test/public/classname/images/imagenum) I also have to confess things look noticeably slower with the prefix.