# Problems with Media Temple and post requests

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/problems-with-media-temple-and-post-requests/90964>\
**Category:** Deployment\
**Created:** [April 3, 2007, 12:54pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/problems-with-media-temple-and-post-requests/90964 "2007-04-03T12:54:15Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 15\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![trevorturk](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/t/278dde/32.png) [@trevorturk](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/trevorturk)\
**Post date:** [April 3, 2007, 12:54pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/problems-with-media-temple-and-post-requests/90964/1 "2007-04-03T12:54:15Z")

</div>

I’m not certain, but I think I’m having a problem with my app  
receiving post requests in production. I’ve got two distinct problems  
that only manifest themselves in production on a Media Temple Grid  
Server plan. I’m using Capistrano to deploy and I’m running Rails  
1.2.3.

The first problem is that I’ve got a form that auto-submits when a  
select menu is changed. The form submits, but doesn’t appear to submit  
a post request. I’ve got an if statement checking if request.post?  
that returns false, and I don’t see anything indicating a post request  
in the production.log file. It works perfectly on my development  
machine, though.

The second problem is that my create actions aren’t being invoked in  
certain cases where I’m using attachment\_fu. It’s a similar problem,  
where post requests don’t seem to be processed correctly in  
production. Basically, I submit a form using RESTful conventions and  
the index action is invoked instead of the create action.

I’m wondering if these two problems are related in that they both  
involve improper handling of post request in production. I posted some  
additional detail here as well:

> **[RailsNotes — The Ruby on Rails guides you wished you had.](https://railsnotes.xyz/)**
>
> RailsNotes 🟥 is a collection of the Ruby on Rails guides you wished you had, when you were first starting out. We have interesting Ruby on Rails articles for topics like Hotwire, Stimulus, ActionMailer, Databases, Deployment and more. Whether you're...

If somebody has experienced this, or thinks they know what’s going on,  
I’d appreciate any help you can provide. I can’t seem to track down  
the problem, and I’m completely out of ideas.

Thanks much!

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![trevorturk](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/t/278dde/32.png) [@trevorturk](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/trevorturk)\
**Post date:** [April 5, 2007, 2:08am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/problems-with-media-temple-and-post-requests/90964/2 "2007-04-05T02:08:28Z")

</div>

I’ve gotten a response from Media Temple on this, although I’m still  
not sure how I’ll resolve the issue. I’m sure I’m not the first or  
last person who’ll try to do what I’m doing, so I’m hopeful that I’ll  
find a solution. Here’s what they said:

* * *

The problem you are running into is not caused by code or  
configuration, but coincidence. Your controller is exposed as “/files”  
and you have a directory in your public folder called files.

When your form is created, the action is “/files”. When this post  
request hits the Grid, Apache sees that request ([http://app.com/files](http://app.com/files))  
and that there is a directory there, and so appends a slash (http://  
[app.com/files/](http://app.com/files/)) and redirects the browser to the new URL. This is  
standard Apache behavior since most requests for a directory name are  
usually for the directory’s contents rather than the directory itself.  
Since Apache does the redirect, the post turns into a get before your  
Rails application even has a chance to see it. To test this out,  
rename your files directory to any other name and you will see that  
the post request starts working again.

And, seeing that you are also having issues with the /headers and /  
avatars and that there are matching directories in your public  
directory, the same issue is probably happening there.

* * *

If anyone has an idea of how to work around this behavior (changing  
the Apache config?) please let me know. Otherwise, I’ll update this  
post when I figure out a solution.

- Trevor

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![trevorturk](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/t/278dde/32.png) [@trevorturk](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/trevorturk)\
**Post date:** [April 5, 2007, 5:03am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/problems-with-media-temple-and-post-requests/90964/3 "2007-04-05T05:03:45Z")

</div>

Thanks so much for your reply, Ezra. I’ll get in touch with them right  
away with that info.

Not to sound too silly, but I was staring at [http://www.engineyard.com/](http://www.engineyard.com/)  
the other day wishing I could afford to sign up! I figured you guys  
would have all of this stuff sorted already. Maybe someday soon,  
though 🙂

- Trevor

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![trevorturk](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/t/278dde/32.png) [@trevorturk](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/trevorturk)\
**Post date:** [April 5, 2007, 2:21am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/problems-with-media-temple-and-post-requests/90964/4 "2007-04-05T02:21:29Z")

</div>

Hey~

On Apr 4, 2007, at 5:07 PM, Trevor T. wrote:

> and you have a directory in your public folder called files.  
> the post request starts working again.
> 
> - Trevor

Sounds like they don’t have apache configured right for serving  
rails apps. Having directories in your public/ dir named after  
controllers is how rails page caching works and is a fundemantal part  
of how the rewrites are setup to serve rails apps. You should grab  
the apache2.2 config from [mongrel.rubyforge.org](http://mongrel.rubyforge.org) or from the  
railsmachine gem and show it to them.

Cheers

– Ezra Z.  
– Lead Rails Evangelist  
– removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid  
– Engine Y., Serious Rails Hosting  
– (866) 518-YARD (9273)

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![trevorturk](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/t/278dde/32.png) [@trevorturk](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/trevorturk)\
**Post date:** [April 5, 2007, 5:38pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/problems-with-media-temple-and-post-requests/90964/5 "2007-04-05T17:38:07Z")

</div>

Hi all. I have a Capistrano recipe that is deploying great to my test  
server and 3 production servers. On the test server I have mySQL and  
Rails  
running together. Deploy\_with\_migrations works great on this machine.  
My  
produciton servers are Rails app only and I have a dedicated mySQL  
server.  
Deploy works great without a :db value but if I add the :db to the list  
then  
the deployment chokles while trying to write the app files to that  
server.  
I didn’t even have ruby on rails installed on that machine. So I tried  
to  
create a new task with only the :db value and run that task with a  
simple  
migrate just to get my database tables in place (the database itself is  
already created) and it still chokes. Task “test” works like a dream,  
“production1” fails, “production2” and "production3 " work. I had all  
the  
production machines in one task at first as :web, :web2 and :web3 but it  
didn’t seem to like that. In any case, seperating them confirmed that  
access and connectivity are working. Here’s my capistrano recipe, which  
can  
probably use a ton of improvement anyway:

require “mongrel\_cluster/recipes”

set :application, “bankspower”

set :repository, “svn://172.16.1.23:48000/#{application}/trunk”

set :deploy\_to, “/website/#{application}”

set :mongrel\_conf, “#{current\_path}/config/mongrel\_cluster.yml”

set :user, “rrubio”

set :checkout, “export”

set :keep\_releases, “3”

task :test do

set :rails\_env, :test

role :web, “172.16.1.23”

role :app, “172.16.1.23”

role :db, “172.16.1.23”, :primary =\> true

end

task :production1 do

set :rails\_env, :production

set :mongrel\_conf,  
“#{current\_path}/config/production/mongrel\_cluster.yml”

role :web, “192.168.168.31”

role :app, “192.168.168.31”

role :db, “172.16.1.30” , :primary =\> true

end

task :production3 do

set :rails\_env, :production

set :mongrel\_conf,  
“#{current\_path}/config/production/mongrel\_cluster.yml”

role :web, “192.168.168.33”

role :app, “192.168.168.33”

end

task :production\_db, :roles =\> :db do

set :rails\_env, :production

role :db, “172.16.1.30”, :primary =\> true

end

Thanks for any assistance!

Raul

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![trevorturk](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/t/278dde/32.png) [@trevorturk](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/trevorturk)\
**Post date:** [April 12, 2007, 8:39am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/problems-with-media-temple-and-post-requests/90964/6 "2007-04-12T08:39:27Z")

</div>

The people at Media Temple helped me find a workaround for this  
problem. I’ve gotten everything working with this fix:

\<% form\_for(:avatar, :url =\> ‘/avatars/’, :html =\> { :multipart =\>  
true }) do |f| -%\>

… instead of:

\<% form\_for(:avatar, :url =\> avatars\_path, :html =\> { :multipart =\>  
true }) do |f| -%\>

The “avatars” path generates the action URL as “/avatars” without a  
trailing slash. Apparently, adding this trailing slash on the URL  
helps things work properly.

I’m still convinced that I shouldn’t have to change the URL like this,  
but I’m not sure if this is a problem with the Media Temple  
configuration or something that should be fixed in Rails itself. I’m  
going to submit a ticket on the Rails Trac site and continue to  
investigate. If anyone has any ideas about this, I’m all ears.

- Trevor

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![trevorturk](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/t/278dde/32.png) [@trevorturk](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/trevorturk)\
**Post date:** [April 12, 2007, 4:01am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/problems-with-media-temple-and-post-requests/90964/7 "2007-04-12T04:01:09Z")

</div>

I got some more responses from Media Temple on the issues I’ve been  
having with routes and post requests not being picked up. It seems  
that they’re not going to be able to do anything to fix my problem,  
and I’m totally lost as to how I should proceed.

In short, posting a form to something like avatars\_url in an attempt  
to invoke a create action will be (wrongly) redirected to the index  
action if there is a public/avatars directory (or, more specifically,  
a symlink in that location that points to shared/system/avatars). MT  
says that Apache is picking up the request and redirecting it to the  
index action before Rails sees it because of the existence of this  
folder/symlink in the public directory. Apparently, this is the  
intended behavior, which strikes me as odd.

I told them what Ezra said (quoted below), and here’s the summary of  
my conversation with them since then:

MT:

I am skeptical that this is a misconfiguration of our server. I think  
it has more to do with the fact that the form is submitting to the  
bare controller name (that is also a directory) and not an action in  
that controller. Most Rails caching schemes involve more than just the  
controller name (i.e. the name of the action called).

I also noticed in my testing that if I change the action of the form  
to ‘/files/’ rather than ‘/files’ that the form posts correctly.

ME:

The thing is that I’m using standard Rails routes like so:  
map.resources :avatars

So, my forms are like this:  
\<% form\_for(:avatar, :url =\> avatars\_path, :html =\> { :multipart =\>  
true }) do |f| -%\>

Which means (to me, at least) that I’m doing things the “right way”  
for Rails, and I shouldn’t have to change way the forms are submitted.

MT:

I’ve done more testing and I am able to reproduce your problem on my  
DV using Apache 2.0.52 and Mongrel 1.0.1. This means that it’s not a  
problem with the Grid and any special software we run there.

I also verified that Rails caching works (both on the Grid and my DV),  
so nothing about our setup prevents caching.

Here are a couple of suggestions to solve your problem:

1. Try using a different URL to post to rather than /files. I changed  
it in my tests to /files/index and the posting works.

2. Perhaps getting the proxy to happen earlier in the Apache request  
processing might work around it appending the slash to the URL. This  
is not possible on the Grid but may be possible on a DV.

…

They go on to suggest that I might need a greater level of  
customization than they can provide on the Grid Server plan I’ve got  
with them.

My issue still remains, though, and I’m 99% sure that I’m not doing  
anything “wrong” here or anything that should require customization.  
It seems to me that this is a fairly normal thing to do (wanting to  
have routes and a public folder with the same name). Should I change  
the url value in my form\_for call? I would think that using  
“avatars\_path” for the url SHOULD work fine in any deployment  
scenario.

I’m not sure if there is a workaround that might solve my problem  
(.htaccess or something?), but it seems to me that there is something  
wrong with their environment.

Any comments or suggestions would be very helpful and very much  
appreciated.

Thanks,

- Trevor

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![trevorturk](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/t/278dde/32.png) [@trevorturk](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/trevorturk)\
**Post date:** [April 12, 2007, 8:55am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/problems-with-media-temple-and-post-requests/90964/8 "2007-04-12T08:55:29Z")

</div>

Another possible fix is to add the following to controllers/  
application.rb:

def default\_url\_options(options)  
{ :trailing\_slash =\> true }  
end

- Trevor

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![trevorturk](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/t/278dde/32.png) [@trevorturk](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/trevorturk)\
**Post date:** [April 12, 2007, 9:29am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/problems-with-media-temple-and-post-requests/90964/9 "2007-04-12T09:29:34Z")

</div>

Before you go and create that ticket, it may be a good idea to find  
out what your (or MT’s) mod\_rewrite rules look like. Otherwise, it’s  
shooting in the dark.

–  
Alex

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![trevorturk](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/t/278dde/32.png) [@trevorturk](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/trevorturk)\
**Post date:** [April 12, 2007, 9:31am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/problems-with-media-temple-and-post-requests/90964/10 "2007-04-12T09:31:24Z")

</div>

Alexey V. wrote:

> Before you go and create that ticket, it may be a good idea to find  
> out what your (or MT’s) mod\_rewrite rules look like…

You’re right - I’ll do that.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![trevorturk](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/t/278dde/32.png) [@trevorturk](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/trevorturk)\
**Post date:** [April 13, 2007, 4:10am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/problems-with-media-temple-and-post-requests/90964/11 "2007-04-13T04:10:38Z")

</div>

I got some more replies from Media Temple on this, and it seems like  
there’s an even easier workaround. Here’s what they said:

* * *

There are no rewrite rules that cause Apache to append a slash. After  
inquiring with one of our admins and a little more research, the  
documentation detailing this feature was found. It is at this page:  
[http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.0/mod/mod\_dir.html](http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.0/mod/mod_dir.html)

And here’s the good part. One of the directives on that page will  
solve your problem. Put this in your .htaccess file and Apache will no  
longer append slashes:

DirectorySlash Off

* * *

It seems as though Apache appends these slashes by default, and I’m  
unclear as to why the Rails-generated routes would not include this  
trailing slash. I realize there’s a trailing\_slash option in  
ActionController:

> **[ActionController::Base](https://api.rubyonrails.org/classes/ActionController/Base.html)**
>
> Action Controllers are the core of a web request in Rails. They are made up of one or more actions that are executed on request and then either it renders a template or redirects to another action.

… but is there a good reason why a route like “uploads\_path”  
wouldn’t generate the trailing slash?

Sorry if I sound naive here, but I am 🙂

I’d just like to help other people avoid this problem in the future,  
because it’s taken a big chunk out of my sanity trying to figure out  
what’s been going on.

- Trevor

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![trevorturk](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/t/278dde/32.png) [@trevorturk](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/trevorturk)\
**Post date:** [October 24, 2007, 2:13am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/problems-with-media-temple-and-post-requests/90964/12 "2007-10-24T02:13:16Z")

</div>

Calvin Yu wrote:

> Saying that this isn’t their  
> problem just shows how low of a priority Rails is to them.

I agree, and that’s one of the main reasons that I left for the greener  
pastures of Slicehost. That being said, I wonder if this isn’t something  
that Rails might be better off including in their default apps. Perhaps  
it would cause some other problems I’m not aware of, though…

- Trevor

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![trevorturk](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/t/278dde/32.png) [@trevorturk](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/trevorturk)\
**Post date:** [March 2, 2008, 3:44am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/problems-with-media-temple-and-post-requests/90964/13 "2008-03-02T03:44:12Z")

</div>

this post just helped me solve this same problem which reared its head  
way back in Oct 07.

I was moving a site which had been running on TextDrive for 6 months  
over to MediaTemple’s grid. The site ran fine in development mode on  
my machine. When I put it on MT, all my flash[] calls were not  
working… and then I realized that no data was being posted either…  
I pulled my hair out for a day or so now and then, and finally just  
got back to working on it today.

We’ll most importantly I wanted to verify to you that all the crap  
about symlinks and directories being named this or that has nothing to  
do with the problem. It’s simply MT’s apache config screwing up the  
http post data with custom routes. The only thing unique to my app was  
custom routing. I added the DirectorySlash Off to my .htaccess, did a  
cap deploy, and voila… everything was finally back to normal.

you may want to add that information to the thread for other’s sake.

On Oct 23 2007, 6:13 pm, Trevor T. \<ruby-forum-incom…@andreas-

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![trevorturk](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/t/278dde/32.png) [@trevorturk](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/trevorturk)\
**Post date:** [October 24, 2007, 1:49am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/problems-with-media-temple-and-post-requests/90964/14 "2007-10-24T01:49:39Z")

</div>

Hey Trevor,

Thank you so much for taking the time to post this solutions to this  
problem. I just ran into the same problem at MT, and the  
‘DirectorySlash Off’ fix seem to work like a charm.

The reason why Rails doesn’t put a trailing slash at the end of the URL  
is because that compromises the concept of REST. With REST, you want  
your URL to as much as possible identify the exact resource you’re  
trying to access. For example, in your case a GET request to /files  
should return a list files uploaded – the meaning of the document is  
just more clear when the document name you’re trying to retrieve is  
called ‘files’ instead of ‘index’.

This is a pretty big issue with Media Temple, and it doesn’t sit well  
with me that they’re pushing it aside like this. More and more of the  
Rail apps being built today are taking advantage of the REST  
capabilities that were put into Rails 1.2. Saying that this isn’t their  
problem just shows how low of a priority Rails is to them.

– Calvin

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![trevorturk](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/t/278dde/32.png) [@trevorturk](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/trevorturk)\
**Post date:** [November 22, 2010, 4:16pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/problems-with-media-temple-and-post-requests/90964/15 "2010-11-22T16:16:41Z")

</div>

I am very satisfied with [Unlimitedgb.com](http://Unlimitedgb.com)’s service. It have very fast  
moving servers…It doen’t take much much time to upgrade my ads into it.