Using Ruby On Rails With Apache2 On Debian Etch - Page 2 | HowtoForge - Linux Howtos and Tutorials

6 Modifying Our Application's .htaccess File

The web folder of testapplication is /var/rails/testapplication/public. It contains an .htaccess file that we must modify so that Apache2 can run RoR applications using mod-fcgid.

vi /var/rails/testapplication/public/.htaccess

Comment out the AddHandler fastcgi-script .fcgi and AddHandler cgi-script .cgi lines and add the line AddHandler fcgid-script .fcgi. Also comment out the line RewriteRule ^(.*)$ dispatch.cgi [QSA,L] and add the line RewriteRule ^(.*)$ dispatch.fcgi [QSA,L] (note that it's now dispatch.fcgi instead of dispatch.cgi). Afterwards, the file should look like this:
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# General Apache options
#AddHandler fastcgi-script .fcgi
#AddHandler cgi-script .cgi
AddHandler fcgid-script .fcgi
Options +FollowSymLinks +ExecCGI

# If you don't want Rails to look in certain directories,
# use the following rewrite rules so that Apache won't rewrite certain requests
#
# Example:
# RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/notrails.*
# RewriteRule .* - [L]

# Redirect all requests not available on the filesystem to Rails
# By default the cgi dispatcher is used which is very slow
#
# For better performance replace the dispatcher with the fastcgi one
#
# Example:
# RewriteRule ^(.*)$ dispatch.fcgi [QSA,L]
RewriteEngine On

# If your Rails application is accessed via an Alias directive,
# then you MUST also set the RewriteBase in this htaccess file.
#
# Example:
# Alias /myrailsapp /path/to/myrailsapp/public
# RewriteBase /myrailsapp

RewriteRule ^$ index.html [QSA]
RewriteRule ^([^.]+)$ $1.html [QSA]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
#RewriteRule ^(.*)$ dispatch.cgi [QSA,L]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ dispatch.fcgi [QSA,L]

# In case Rails experiences terminal errors
# Instead of displaying this message you can supply a file here which will be rendered instead
#
# Example:
# ErrorDocument 500 /500.html

ErrorDocument 500 "

Application error

Rails application failed to start properly"


7 Creating A Virtual Host For Our RoR Application

(If you use ISPConfig, please go to chapter 8!)

Now it's time to create an Apache vhost for our application. I will use the hostname testapplication.example.com so that our application can be reached under http://testapplication.example.com (assuming that testapplication.example.com points to the correct IP address).

The easiest way to create such a vhost is to replace the existing default vhost in /etc/apache2/sites-available/default (assuming that this default vhost isn't needed!):

cp /etc/apache2/sites-available/default /etc/apache2/sites-available/default_old
cat /dev/null > /etc/apache2/sites-available/default
vi /etc/apache2/sites-available/default


ServerName testapplication.example.com
DocumentRoot /var/rails/testapplication/public/


Options ExecCGI FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride all
Order allow,deny
Allow from all



Of course, instead of replacing the default vhost, you can simply add your testapplication.example.com vhost at the end of /etc/apache2/sites-available/default so that you keep the default vhost.

Now we restart Apache:

/etc/init.d/apache2 restart

Next we open http://testapplication.example.com in a browser. We should see the default RoR page:

That's it! Now we can start to develop our RoR application in the /var/rails/testapplication directory.


8 RoR And ISPConfig

(If you don't use ISPConfig, skip this chapter!)

In this chapter I assume that you have created a web site called testapplication.example.com with the document root /var/www/web1/web in ISPConfig, and that your RoR testapplication is still in /var/rails/testapplication.

To make our RoR testapplication available in the testapplication.example.com vhost which we have created in ISPConfig, we do the following:

First, we put the following lines into the Apache Directives field of the testapplication.example.com web site in ISPConfig:


Options +ExecCGI +FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride all


Then we rename /var/rails/testapplication/public to /var/rails/testapplication/web, copy the contents of /var/rails/testapplication to /var/www/web1, and make the Apache user the owner of /var/www/web1/web:

cd /var/rails/testapplication
mv public web
cp -pfr * /var/www/web1
chown www-data:web1 /var/www/web1/web

That's it. The RoR application should now work in the testapplication.example.com vhost which we have created in ISPConfig.


9 Links

* Ruby on Rails: http://www.rubyonrails.org
* Ruby: http://www.ruby-lang.org
* Debian: http://www.debian.org
* ISPConfig: http://www.ispconfig.org

Using Ruby On Rails With Apache2 On Debian Etch - Page 2 | HowtoForge - Linux Howtos and Tutorials

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