Web server q -- playing nice w/ PHP

Rails
1

I have a webserver that’s happily running apache2 and PHP. I’d like to
deploy a site that I wrote using RoR on that same server but read that
there might be some conflicts with PHP and RoR trying to access the same
MySQL database.

How real are those conflicts? Could I mess up my running PHP site if I
install mod_ruby and try to use Apache2?

Would I be better off installing lighttpd and running it and apache2 at
the same time? (Is that even possible?)

2

On 4-dec-2005, at 22:12, viniosity wrote:

Would I be better off installing lighttpd and running it and
apache2 at
the same time? (Is that even possible?)

I wasn’t able to get PHP and mod_ruby working with MySQL on the same
Apache instance. Even when I compiled
both of them myself. PHP had access to MySQL but Ruby didn’t. When I
removed mod_php from the list of modules Ruby can get to the database
easily.

Running lighttpd proxied by Apache works reasonably well.

–
Julian ‘Julik’ Tarkhanov
me at julik.nl

3

I recently took a site running apache2/mod_php and converted it to
running lighttpd/fastcgi. Fastcgi is now driving both a (legacy) PHP
application and an RoR application, and RoR is connecting to the legacy
app’s MySQL instance without issues.

I too was hesitant to migrate a functioning apache2/mod_php application
to lighttpd but it wasn’t that difficult. The hardest part was finding
good docs and examples for the lighttpd.conf file. Once I had the config
file ironed out everything went very smoothly. The site has been online
for about six weeks now without any problems. Lighttpd only implements a
small subset of apache2’s features, but IMO if everything you need is
covered by lighttpd, it is a better choice than the apache2 + proxy +
lighttpd solution.

If anyone is interested I’ll post my lighttpd.conf file here.

4

.

If anyone is interested I’ll post my lighttpd.conf file here.

I’m definitely interested! Actually, if you have step by step
instructions that would be fab. Which distro did you use? I’m
currently on Debian sarge which does not have a package for lighttpd…

5

viniosity wrote:

I have a webserver that’s happily running apache2 and PHP. I’d like to
deploy a site that I wrote using RoR on that same server but read that
there might be some conflicts with PHP and RoR trying to access the same
MySQL database.

Here I was running Apache2 + mod_php4. I added rails sites without too
much efforts using scgi. The single non-trivial point is to give a
separate scgi port number to each vhost.

6

On Dec 4, 2005, at 6:25 PM, Vince W. wrote:

My situation is that I have a rails app I want to deploy but only have
an apache2/php4 server at my disposal.

SCGI is definitely a nice option but I have had very good luck with

lighttpd proxied behind and apache vhost. This would allow you to
pretty much leave your good running apache alone and just add one
vhost per rails site like this:

<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName example.com
ServerAlias www.example.com
#ProxyPreserveHost on #<-apache2 only
ProxyPass / http://example.com:8000/
ProxyPassReverse / http://example.com:8000/

Then run your rails app on fastcgi/lighttpd. This way you can

connect to your db from php and ruby with no problems. This is a
tried and trusted way of doing things and m any shared web hosts that
offer rails support do it this way.

Cheers-
-Ezra Z.
WebMaster
Yakima Herald-Republic Newspaper
[email protected]
509-577-7732

7

Here I was running Apache2 + mod_php4. I added rails sites without too
much efforts using scgi. The single non-trivial point is to give a
separate scgi port number to each vhost.

I would appreciate any guidance you can give. I am not familiar with
scgi at all and so am not familiar with what it would take to
install/configure it and/or rails on my webserver.

My situation is that I have a rails app I want to deploy but only have
an apache2/php4 server at my disposal.

8

Vince W. wrote:

My situation is that I have a rails app I want to deploy but only have
an apache2/php4 server at my disposal.

Same here :wink:

I would appreciate any guidance you can give. I am not familiar with
scgi at all and so am not familiar with what it would take to
install/configure it and/or rails on my webserver.

I first became familiar with scgi (er… simply I installed mod_scgi and
scgi_rails on the dev box, read all the docs that Zed wrote and made
some trys). Then some days later I made the same on the production box.

9

Here are the important sections of my lighttpd.conf file,
with some comments added. I am using Gentoo but I don’t think
there is anything distro-specific here.

This config was pieced together from many examples. I’d love
to hear comments or suggestions if anyone has them.

One caveat: Initially I had trouble getting the rails
application to route properly. I traced the problem to
some of the rails code referenced in this ticket/patch:

http://dev.rubyonrails.org/ticket/1048

Removing the apache-specific condition in relative_url_root
fixed the problem. I haven’t been able to determine if this
is a problem in my setup or in rails itself.

-----------------------------------------start

###########################################################
###########################################################

lighttpd.conf file serving both PHP and Ruby on Rails

applications via fastcgi. This file is for lighttpd 1.4.7

[email protected]

#######################################################

General server config, see lighttpd docs for details.

var.logdir = “/var/log/lighttpd”

server.modules = (
“mod_rewrite”,
“mod_access”,
“mod_auth”,
“mod_accesslog”,
“mod_fastcgi”,
“mod_alias”
)

include “mime-types.conf”

server.username = “lighttpd”
server.groupname = “lighttpd”
server.pid-file = “/var/run/lighttpd.pid”
server.indexfiles = (“dispatch.fcgi”, “index.php”, “index.html”,
“index.htm”, “default.htm”)

server.tag = “lighttpd”
server.follow-symlink = “enable”

static-file.exclude-extensions = (“.php”, “.pl”, “.cgi”, “.fcgi”, “.rb”,
“.rhtml”)
url.access-deny = (“~”, “.inc”, “.conf”)

server.errorlog = var.logdir + “/error.log”
accesslog.filename = var.logdir + “/access.log”

########################################################

By default, display an empty website. Rules below will

override this setting. This may not be appropriate or

necessary for all sites.

server.document-root = “/var/www/empty”

########################################################

A common directory for all web roots (optional).

alias.url = (“/common/” => “/var/www/common/”)

############################################################

Main configuration. In this config, the root of the web

site hosts a legacy PHP application (http://the-site.com)

while an RoR application is available beneath the root at

http://the-site.com/rorapp

$HTTP[“host”] =~ “the-site.com” {

Root of the php application.

server.document-root = “/var/www/phpapp”

Rewrite all requests to /rorapp to use dispatch.fcgi, except

static content. The rails app is in /var/www/rorapp. There is

a symlink from /var/www/phpapp/rorapp → /var/www/rorapp/public.

url.rewrite = (“^/rorapp/stylesheets/(.+)” =>
“/rorapp/stylesheets/$1”,
“^/rorapp/images/(.+)” => “/rorapp/images/$1”,
“^/rorapp/javascripts/(.+)” =>
“/rorapp/javascripts/$1”,
“^/rorapp/(.*)$” => “/rorapp/dispatch.fcgi”)

Fastcgi configuration. The PHP application is spawned externally

via spawn-fcgi, while the RoR application is spawned and monitored

using the rails command script/process/spinner.

PHP must be compiled with fastcgi support. PHP/spawn-fcgi will

handle multiple processes internally, you only need to specify

the base port number here. See the spawn-fcgi docs for more info.

For the rails app, you need to specify each port spawned by

the spinner/spawner. This example uses three handlers. You may

need to install the fcgi ruby gem as well.

fastcgi.server = ( “.php” =>
( “localhost” =>
(
“host” => “127.0.0.1”,
“port” => 1200
)
),

".fcgi" => (
  "localhost" =>
  (
    "host" => "127.0.0.1",
    "port" => 1220
  ),
  (
    "host" => "127.0.0.1",
    "port" => 1221
  ),
  (
    "host" => "127.0.0.1",
    "port" => 1222
  )
)

)
}

################################################

SSL (optional). Specify the IP address of your

external interface here.

$SERVER[“socket”] == “172.16.0.1:443” {
ssl.engine = “enable”
ssl.pemfile = “/etc/lighttpd/ssl/the-site.com.pem”
ssl.ca-file = “/etc/lighttpd/ssl/the-site.com.ca”
}

###########################################################

Another web root is specified here. In my implementation

I have several of these serving different sites. This

is optional of course.

$HTTP[“host”] =~ “another-site.com” {
ssl.engine = “disable”
server.document-root = “/var/www/another-site”
}

---------------------------------------------end

10

Ok, I tried and tried and completely failed to get this working. In a
moment of complete frustration I erased my box and started from scratch.
This time with Ubuntu instead of Debian. Step 1: Get Rails working.
Step 2. Get PHP working.

Thanks to this fantastic tutorial I was able to accomplish Step 1.
http://fo64.com/articles/2005/10/20/rails-on-breezy

Now can anyone help me get my PHP sites back up? I assume I have to
disable FastCGI for the particular site in Apache2’s sites-enabled and
sites-available conf files but that’s just me guessing…