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Serving Ruby on Rails with Apache2 and mod_fcgid on Leopard

This tutorial will show you how to install and configure mod_fcgid on your system so you can serve Ruby on Rails applications with the Apache2 Web server.

For this tutorial we assume that you are running a custom installation of Apache2 located at /usr/local/apache2 with Leopard's Ruby on Rails native installation. If you want to use Leopard's Apache2 installation, you'll have to change the paths in the mod_fcgid Makefile to point to Leopard's Apache2 installation directories.

1. Installing mod_fcgid

Download mod_fcgid source code from http://sourceforge.net/projects/mod-fcgid/
Extract into /usr/local/src
% cd /usr/local/src/mod_fcgid.2.2 % make % sudo make install

Configuring Apache

% nano /usr/local/apache2/conf % sudo nano httpd.conf

Add the following at the end of the LoadModule list LoadModule fcgid_module modules/mod_fcgid.so <IfModule mod_fcgid.c> AddHandler fcgid-script .fcgi IPCCommTimeout 40 IPCConnectTimeout 10 SocketPath /var/tmp/fcgidsock </IfModule> Scroll down to the end of the httpd.conf file and make sure that the following line is not commented:
Include conf/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf Save and close httpd.conf

Installing fcgi gem

% sudo gem install fcgi

Add a virtual host for your Rails application

% sudo nano /usr/local/apache2/conf/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf Add the following lines at the end of the file: Listen 4000 <VirtualHost *:4000> DocumentRoot "/Path/to/Rails/app/public" <Directory "/Path/to/Rails/app/public"> AddHandler fcgid-script .fcgi Options +ExecCGI +MultiViews +FollowSymLinks AllowOverride All order allow,deny allow from all </Directory> </VirtualHost>
* Please replace /Path/to/Rails/app/ with the real path to your Rails application.
Restart Apache

In the .htaccess file of your Rails application, please comment out the following 2 lines: #AddHandler fastcgi-script .fcgi #AddHandler cgi-script .cgi And change RewriteRule ^(.*)$ dispatch.cgi [QSA,L] to RewriteRule ^(.*)$ dispatch.fcgi [QSA,L]