# Mongrel, Nginx, and AJAX not working **URL:** \ **Category:** Deployment\ **Created:** [July 24, 2007, 7:11pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/mongrel-nginx-and-ajax-not-working/110259 "2007-07-24T19:11:49Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![jruyle](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/d2c977/32.png) [@jruyle](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/jruyle)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2007, 7:11pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/mongrel-nginx-and-ajax-not-working/110259/1 "2007-07-24T19:11:49Z")
Under Apache / FastCGI, the following request is perfectly fine (as pulled from the browser’s View Source): new Ajax.Request(‘[http://server/portals?editable=true&update=portal\_list\_wrapper](http://server/portals?editable=true&update=portal_list_wrapper)’, {asynchronous:true, evalScripts:true, method:‘get’}) However, under my new setup of Nginx and Mongrels, the call never returns. I get the proper log in production.log, stuff happens, and my browser just sits there twiddling it’s thumbs, never getting what it wants back (note: the update _is_ meant to be part of the GET string). Has anyone else had a problem with this kind of setup? It feels that AJAX responses are getting stopped by Nginx but I can’t find anything out about this. Thanks Jason ---
**Author:** ![jruyle](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/d2c977/32.png) [@jruyle](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/jruyle)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2007, 7:22pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/mongrel-nginx-and-ajax-not-working/110259/2 "2007-07-24T19:22:44Z")
I know this isn’t the answer you’re looking for, but I ran into issues like this at least 3 times with lighttpd which is why I switched to nginx/mongrel. Each time I had a problem, firebug was essential in figuring out the problem… maybe take a look at the output from firebug and see if it helps… -Vince On 7/24/07, Jason R. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote: > the update _is_ meant to be part of the GET string). – support independent business – [http://www.buyindie.net/](http://www.buyindie.net/) ---
**Author:** ![jruyle](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/d2c977/32.png) [@jruyle](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/jruyle)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2007, 7:30pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/mongrel-nginx-and-ajax-not-working/110259/3 "2007-07-24T19:30:23Z")
Yeah, I’ve been watching Firebug, the request just spins until it times out. Getting back into the server works no problem, but there’s nothing coming back to my browser. Thanks though. Interesting that you had this same problem with lighty. Jason ---
**Author:** ![jruyle](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/d2c977/32.png) [@jruyle](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/jruyle)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2007, 10:57pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/mongrel-nginx-and-ajax-not-working/110259/4 "2007-07-24T22:57:10Z")
On Tue, 24 Jul 2007 13:10:42 -0400 “Jason R.” [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote: > Under Apache / FastCGI, the following request is perfectly fine (as pulled > from the browser’s View Source): > > new Ajax.Request(‘[http://server/portals?editable=true&update=portal\_list\_wrapper](http://server/portals?editable=true&update=portal_list_wrapper)’, > {asynchronous:true, evalScripts:true, method:‘get’}) What happens when you do & rather than & ? – Zed A. Shaw - Hate: [http://savingtheinternetwithhate.com/](http://savingtheinternetwithhate.com/) - Good: [http://www.zedshaw.com/](http://www.zedshaw.com/) - Evil: [http://yearofevil.com/](http://yearofevil.com/) ---
**Author:** ![jruyle](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/d2c977/32.png) [@jruyle](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/jruyle)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2007, 6:57am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/mongrel-nginx-and-ajax-not-working/110259/5 "2007-07-25T06:57:44Z")
I had a very similar thing happen a few days ago and found a solution for my problem last night. That was Ajax request and firebug was showing the request as spinning and spinning… The code was using Ajax.Request with a post (not a get), and worked fine just with mongrel, but through nginx, it was taking 120s to get back to that Complete state (and, although I’m not sure why, the reason it was taking 120s was probably that another Ajax request was being fired up every 120s). The code responding to the request couldn’t be simpler: ``` render :text => @mailbox.count.unseen ``` unseen happens to return an integer, not a string. And when trying with a string it worked ``` render :text => "1234567890" ``` So just for a moment I thought it was the size of the request, but even a 1 byte string did not make any difference and still worked. So just changing that line to: ``` render :text => @mailbox.count.unseen.to_s ``` fixed it for me. I have not attempted to figure out further what was happening, but my best theory is that the mime type returned by rails (mongrel?) may be different and nginx (or the browser?) is waiting for more to send the response back). Not sure the same thing is happening in your case, but that may be worth looking more closely at the mime type. ## Cheers, Pascal. [http://blog.nanorails.com](http://blog.nanorails.com) ---
**Author:** ![jruyle](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/d2c977/32.png) [@jruyle](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/jruyle)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2007, 7:34pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/mongrel-nginx-and-ajax-not-working/110259/6 "2007-07-27T19:34:27Z")
Follow-up # 2 Ignore previous post, I’m still stuck, though I know what’s wrong now. This is a site migration so traffic already exists to the url. I put up the site on the new box under a different url to see if it works and sure enough, it was snappy and perfect. Thinking all was good, I changed the DNS entry for the real URL and bam, back to a broken site. So this is a load balancing issue then, or at least that’s what it looks like. I now know the whole stack works, but under a site that gets constant but in no ways heavy load, requests responses get lost. Literally. As for the mime type, I’ll definitely look into that but all of my responses are RJS and thus strings. Ug… Jason ---
**Author:** ![jruyle](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/d2c977/32.png) [@jruyle](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/jruyle)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2007, 5:02pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/mongrel-nginx-and-ajax-not-working/110259/7 "2007-07-27T17:02:08Z")
Follow-up: I honestly do not know what I did, but it’s working now. I did install swiftiply to use it’s evented\_mongrel handler, so there might be something there that fixed the problem but I’m not sure. Thanks for all of your suggestions. Jason ---
**Author:** ![jruyle](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/d2c977/32.png) [@jruyle](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/jruyle)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2007, 10:30pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/mongrel-nginx-and-ajax-not-working/110259/8 "2007-07-27T22:30:52Z")
So I just decided to bypass the problem and move to a different URL. Not going to deal with it if I can just get around it. Jason