Newbie question about mongrel

[casper_the_ghost]

Hi,

I am very new to ruby, rails, and mongrel, so this may not make any
sense, but i figured i would ask it anyways.

I have been given the task of determining if rails is a good
transition for our company.

While my preliminary tests have been successful (i.e. installing
mongrel, deploying a test app, etc), i have to figure out how to run
our existing cgi scripts under our new environment.

Previously we were using apache + mod_perl, and my question is do i
still need to install mod_perl, or is mongrel optimized to handle perl
in a fast fashion?

secondly, how do i run a cgi script when running rails, do i simply
put a cgi-bin directory in my public directory under my rails app, or
is it more complicated than that (i.e. modifying my httpd.conf file to
point somewhere other than rails/mongrel)?

sorry for my lack of understanding of apache+rails+mongrel, but I am
learning as i go.

thanks!

[casper_the_ghost]

Hi Faisal,

so I took your advice, I decided to use mod_perl and mongrel together,
and I installed mod perl, and i ran it (without mongrel, and
everything works fine),

then i followed the following tutorial:
http://blog.gwikzone.org/articles/2006/10/02/easy-setup-a-mongrel-cluster-with-apache-2-2-on-mac-os-x
to setup a mongrel cluster (im using linux instead of a mac, but it
works the same), and I tested it, and rails loaded fine, however, when
i went to:

mysite.com/cgi-bin/test.pl

i get a Service Temporary Unavailable problem.

Im assuming the problem is within my httpd.conf file, but I am not
that familiar with it. Other than the stuff added in the tutorial
above, I have the following cgi-related stuff:

ScriptAlias /cgi-bin/ “/var/www/cgi-bin/”

<Directory “/var/www/cgi-bin”>
AllowOverride None
Options None
Order allow,deny
Allow from all

I am using apache 2.2.4 and mod_perl 2.0

any help is greatly appreciated. Thanks!

[casper_the_ghost]

On Apr 25, 2007, at 11:46 PM, [email protected] wrote:

Previously we were using apache + mod_perl, and my question is do i
still need to install mod_perl, or is mongrel optimized to handle perl
in a fast fashion?

For this situation you’re probably best off continuing to use
mod_perl for the perl parts, and proxying the rails parts to mongrel
instances.

secondly, how do i run a cgi script when running rails, do i simply
put a cgi-bin directory in my public directory under my rails app, or
is it more complicated than that (i.e. modifying my httpd.conf file to
point somewhere other than rails/mongrel)?

If you’re using Apache then the perl-based things don’t need to be in
the rails directory at all – use the Apache configuration to tell
Apache where the cgi (or mod_perl) scripts are and point the rest
over to the proxy that talks to the mongrel servers.

-faisal