Apr 16 2008
mod_rails – The Crash Course
Couple days ago Phussion guys released mod_rails Apache module. The promise is very simple: deploy Rails applications in the PHP way. This is not the best marketing they could have. Rails application deployment is not a big thing – I was deploying applications with shell scripts at no cost at all. Since there is Capistrano tool I don’t think this is a problem at all. The upload-single-file-through-ftp approach is making more troubles than it solves (which files did I change?) and it is not encouraging me to peek at the new toy at all. What I want to see is simplistic installation procedure and the amazing performance (speed is promoted right after the promise of easy deployment).
Having spare couple of minutes I couldn’t resist to give it a try. Following is a log like record of the installation.
~$ cat /etc/lsb-release | grep DESC DISTRIB_DESCRIPTION="Ubuntu 8.04"
Missing ruby1.8-dev on my machine ( error “no such file to load — mkmf”)
$ sudo apt-get install ruby1.8-dev
Missing apache2, rake and dev packages
sudo apt-get install apache2-mpm-prefork apache2-prefork-dev libapr1-dev rake
After successful installation it’s time to build and install the module
~$ sudo /var/lib/gems/1.8/gems/passenger-1.0.1/bin/passenger-install-apache2-module
Checking for required software... * GNU C++ compiler... found at /usr/bin/g++ * Ruby development headers... found * OpenSSL support for Ruby... found * RubyGems... found * Rake... found at /usr/bin/rake * Apache 2... found at /usr/sbin/apache2 * Apache 2 development headers... found at /usr/bin/apxs2 * Apache Portable Runtime (APR) development headers... found * fastthread... found
Apache configuration:
~$ sudo bash ~$ cd /etc/apache2/mods-available/ /etc/apache2/mods-available$ vi mod_rails.load LoadModule passenger_module /var/lib/gems/1.8/gems/passenger-1.0.1/ext/apache2/mod_passenger.so /etc/apache2/mods-available$ vi mod_rails.conf RailsSpawnServer /var/lib/gems/1.8/gems/passenger-1.0.1/bin/passenger-spawn-server RailsRuby /usr/bin/ruby1.8
Enable the mod_rails modules
/etc/apache2/mods-available$ cd ../mods-enabled/ /etc/apache2/mods-enabled$ ln -s ../mods-available/mod_rails.load /etc/apache2/mods-enabled$ ln -s ../mods-available/mod_rails.conf
Reload Apache web server
sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 reload
Open the documentation and continue
firefox "file:///var/lib/gems/1.8/gems/passenger-1.0.1/doc/Users guide.html"At this stage I decided to test a Rails application located within a public user folder
/etc/apache2/mods-enabled$ ln -s ../mods-available/userdir.conf /etc/apache2/mods-enabled$ ln -s ../mods-available/userdir.load /etc/apache2/mods-enabled$ sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 reload
First attempt to access the application
Internal Server Error ... More information about this error may be available in the server error log. Apache/2.2.8 (Ubuntu) Phusion_Passenger/1.0.1 Server at localhost Port 80
Log check revealed the configuration is missing rewrite module
$ tail -f /var/log/apache2/error.log [Wed Apr 16 22:33:09 2008] [alert] [client 127.0.0.1] /home/ciukes/public_html/odliczam/public/.htaccess: Invalid command 'RewriteEngine', perhaps misspelled or defined by a module not included in the server configuration
Enable missing module
/etc/apache2/mods-enabled$ ln -s ../mods-available/rewrite.load /etc/apache2/mods-enabled$ sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 reload
Second attempt to access the application
Not Found ... The requested URL /home/ciukes/public_html/odliczam/public/dispatch.cgi was not found on this server. Apache/2.2.8 (Ubuntu) Phusion_Passenger/1.0.1 Server at localhost Port 80
Log check again
$ tail -f /var/log/apache2/error.log [Wed Apr 16 22:39:00 2008] [error] [client 127.0.0.1] File does not exist: /var/www/home
WTF? WTF? WTF? Despite the prove there is something wrong with the module I decided to created the “missing” file
$ touch /var/www/home
Third attempt to access the aplication…
$ curl -v http://localhost/~ciukes/odliczam/public/ * About to connect() to localhost port 80 (#0) * Trying 127.0.0.1... connected * Connected to localhost (127.0.0.1) port 80 (#0) > GET /~ciukes/odliczam/public/ HTTP/1.1 > User-Agent: curl/7.18.0 (i486-pc-linux-gnu) libcurl/7.18.0 OpenSSL/0.9.8g zlib/1.2.3.3 libidn/1.1 > Host: localhost > Accept: */* > < HTTP/1.1 200 OK < Date: Wed, 16 Apr 2008 20:47:53 GMT < Server: Apache/2.2.8 (Ubuntu) Phusion_Passenger/1.0.1 < Last-Modified: Wed, 16 Apr 2008 20:39:22 GMT < ETag: "8640a3-0-44b0383057280" < Accept-Ranges: bytes < Content-Length: 0 < Content-Type: text/plain < * Connection #0 to host localhost left intact * Closing connection #0
I gave up. The promise of easy deployment should be extended to cover easy installation too.
My spare minutes run away. Maybe another time I will have more patience to dig the problem.