# Rails on Win2k/IIS 5.0

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/rails-on-win2k-iis-5-0/88919>\
**Category:** Rails\
**Created:** [March 15, 2007, 4:38pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/rails-on-win2k-iis-5-0/88919 "2007-03-15T16:38:44Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![rupreckt](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/r/ed655f/32.png) [@rupreckt](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/rupreckt)\
**Post date:** [March 15, 2007, 4:38pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/rails-on-win2k-iis-5-0/88919/1 "2007-03-15T16:38:44Z")

</div>

I’ve got Rails running pretty well, but with a catch that is kind of  
specific to our environment, maybe someone can help.

Basically we have a Win2k/IIS5.0 server (this is the c: drive) that  
only has the site configuration and the perl, php, .net and ruby stuff  
on it. All the data files are supposed to be on our netApps filer  
(call this filer1). This is our written IT Security Policy and I am  
unaware of a way to get an exception.

If I install my rails app on the c: drive, rails works fine under both  
webrick and iis on port 8080. It runs through fastcgi and everything  
that is supposed to happen does. It performs adequately.

However, when I host the rails app on the filer, it stops working  
under IIS but continues to work under webrick, the only exception  
being that it no longer seems to have access to  
request.env[“AUTH\_USER”] as returning the correct information. At this  
point Fastcgi under iis doesn’t appear to do anything. By which I  
mean, it is supposed to trigger 5 rubyw.exe processes which stay in  
memory after the request is made. It doesn’t do this. The only  
difference between the two apps is that the registry value associated  
with triggering fastcgi points to the c: drive dispatch.fcgi file  
(Args REG\_SZ c:\iamstinky\public\dispatch.fcgi)for the version that  
works completely and the registry value for the one that only sort of  
works under webrick points to dispatch.fcgi on filer1 (Args REG\_SZ   
\filer1-san\iamstinkydev$\iamstinkyweb\stinky\public\dispatch.fcgi).

The actual error I get, for the filer1 version, is the ever so helpful  
“Server error, unable to connect to fastcgi server.” which can mean  
just about any thing from my googling. I’m left with two possibilities  
at this point. 1)the fact credentials are being dropped somewhere  
along the way is causing the call to dispatch.fcgi to fail because the  
system sees it as an anonymous request and we require authentication  
for access to all our network resources. This may be a rewrite issue  
that requires a more robust solution than the free rewriter I  
downloaded. 2)there is somekind of prohibition against one server  
triggering an executable on a different system. On the filer version  
dispatch.fcgi and its associated .dll are on two physically different  
machines. No one here knows enough about either iis or the filer to  
tell me if this is a reasonable possibility.

For those wondering there’s a rewrite rule that routes all rails  
traffic to dispatch.fcgi, which by virtue of the registry setting  
causes the traffic to go to the correct rails application. This is  
working correctly.

Additional disclaimer, I cannot use any other server on this machine.  
It’s IIS or no Rails. And there’s no possibility of upgrading to  
win2k3 or iis 6.0 before January of 2008.