HOWTO: FastCGI/Apache & Ruby, Rails

[TheDracle]

Installing RAILS on Ubuntu Breezy Badger

Get ruby:

The package below apparently installs an incompatible 1.8.3 version of the ruby interpreter.

sudo apt-get install ruby1.8

On Breezy, try using the source package below, or perhaps obtain a 1.8.2 deb package?

You can instead get a .tar.gz package, and compile it from source:

wget http://rubyforge.org/frs/download.php/2338/ruby-1.8.2.tar.gz
cd ruby-1.8.2
./configure
make
make test
sudo make install

Get ruby gems:

Go to:

RubyGEMS

And download the latest version, OR use the following wget command:

wget http://rubyforge.org/frs/download.php/5207/rubygems-0.8.11.tgz

Then:

tar -xzf rubygems-0.8.11.tgz
cd rubygems-0.8.11 
sudo ruby setup.rb

Install RAILS with Ruby Gems:

sudo gem install rails

For now, do ‘NOT’ gem install mysql (Use the defaults if you plan to use mysql). I haven’t yet discovered a work around to a segfault problem that occurs. A future HOWTO to install the native mysql drivers is needed.

Fixing Ubuntu Console readline problem

You need to do this to run script/console for RAILS, or else you get the following error:

/usr/local/lib/ruby/1.8/irb/completion.rb:10:in `require’: no such file to load—readline (LoadError)

Install curses and readline

apt-get install libncurses5-dev libreadline5-dev

Manually make and install readline

cd ext/readline

ruby extconf.rb

make

sudo make install

Setup with FastCGI/Apache:

Check out:
Rails WIKI

First, get libfcgi-dev (fcgi headers) and install the fcgi gem:

sudo apt-get install libfcgi-dev
sudo gem install fcgi

Configure apache httpd.conf

Alias /namefromroot/ /home/jason/public_html/railsap/public
    <Directory /home/jason/public_html/railsap/public>
        Options ExecCGI
        AddHandler cgi-script .cgi
        AddHandler fastcgi-script .fcgi .fcg .fpl
        AllowOverride all
        Order allow,deny
        Allow from all
    </Directory>

And make a softlink to your public directory:

ln -s railsap/public /home/jason/public_html/railsap

In the above configuration, I’m making a softlink to my rails project’s public directory, to my public_html directory. I then set an alias, namefromroot, to make it easier for people to access the root of my application.

Add fastcgi to modules.conf

Open modules.conf (/etc/apache/modules.conf on my system) with your favorite editor, and add the following line:

LoadModule fastcgi_module /usr/lib/apache/1.3/mod_fastcgi.so

If you use Alias in httpd.conf for your rails directory, be sure to fix it!

Edit public/.htaccess under your project, and add RewriteBase:

RewriteBase /namefromroot

This will make it so that it redirects to the apropriate base directory.

Also, change

RewriteRule ^(.*)$ dispatch.cgi [QSA,L]
to "RewriteRule ^(.*)$ dispatch.fcgi [QSA,L]

All Directories need a+r permissions, log directory needs write permissions “0666,” and all directories under tmp/ need write permissions to store session data, etc with.

chmod -R a+r app

cd app/log/

chmod a+w *
or
chmod 0666 *

If you get an Rails application failed to start properly” Error

Make sure there are no “puts” statements in your controllers!

If it isn’t working after this:

Clear out the session data from tmp/session, and make sure it’s writable. Also, clear the cookies in your browser, so it will try to make new session data.

[skeeterbug]

There is one problem with this post. Breezy will isntall ruby 1.8.3 which IS NOT comptable with Rails 1.1. Dapper has ruby 1.8.4 and is comptable.

ruby -v will spit out what version you are using.

[TheDracle]

Perhaps it's a bit outdated--- my ruby version shows 1.8.2, on Breezy Badger. Must be out of date, I'll see if I can ammend it to get the right ruby version Thanks!


From the RAILS website:

We recommend Ruby 1.8.4 for use with Rails. Ruby 1.8.2 is fine too, but version 1.8.3 is not.

-Jason Thomas.

[skeeterbug]

Perhaps it's a bit outdated--- my ruby version shows 1.8.2, on Breezy Badger. Must be out of date, I'll see if I can ammend it to get the right ruby version Thanks!


From the RAILS website:

We recommend Ruby 1.8.4 for use with Rails. Ruby 1.8.2 is fine too, but version 1.8.3 is not.

-Jason Thomas.

No problem

I know I ran into this problem installing it just last week. Version 1.8.3 kept getting installed for me. I didn't realize at first that 1.8.3 wouldn't work AT ALL. I spent a lot of time banging my head on the wall re-reading all the howto's trying to figure out what I missed!

[pstreck]

is there a clean way to install ruby 1.8.2 or 1.8.4 on breezy? By clean I mean by using a package. I hate to manually install stuff as it tends to break future updates.

[TheDracle]

is there a clean way to install ruby 1.8.2 or 1.8.4 on breezy? By clean I mean by using a package. I hate to manually install stuff as it tends to break future updates.

I agree completely--- using a source tarball isn't a very good work around. I'd like to look into some work around using a 1.8.2 deb package maybe? Does anyone out there have some information relating to this?

[hotani]

What about Dapper/apache2/fcgid?

Documentation I've read so far has said to use fcgi instead of fastCGI on Apache 2, so that is how I've attempted to set it up.

It looked like all the necessary items were available in Synaptic, so I installed them. However, although the ruby html test page comes up in my test app, rails doesn't seem to be working correctly. I tried adding a controller and got "page not found." Seems like something wrong with my configuration but I can't figure out what. Could someone post up/link to a sample .htaccess or something?

EDIT: Found it! Near the bottom of this page is a great explanation of a virtual host setup, fcgi and the .htaccess file, as well as an example.

[chris.olsen]

For some reason the when I try to start the apache server with:
/usr/local/apache2/bin/apachectl start

I get an error message ( line 412 of the apache httpd.conf file) that the mod_fcgi.so file does not exist, and when I check, sure enough it is not there.

Everything seemed to go good up to this point, including the install of the fastcgi. I am not sure if something got missed or what.

Thanks for any help

[bob_the_d]

Here's a question I have about it though. I follow you up to the editing the httpd.conf file, but when you set up the aliases, I start to worry.

The thing is that I planned on setting this up on a multi-user system and wanted to have all users to be able to deploy rails code. But the alias seems to point the rails code from a specific user. Any way to get around this one?

[RadarListener]

I'm trying to fcgid to work on LAMPP, but at the moment the dispatch.fcgi is showing as plain text.

http://pastebin.ca/86813 is my config.