Mongrel users - Apr 2007 - comparison... why mongrel?

Hi,

I''ve recently deployed a rails app and our platform is Apache 2.2 +
mongrel
cluster. It seems to be working fine... although no real tests yet. I just
recently found out that it is *quite* possible that the live server will not
be getting an update to apache 2.2, and the current version is 1.3. So...
I''ve installed Apache 1.3 + FastCGI on the dev server and it''s
running fine
but...

In order to get any chance of having the admins upgrade Apache on the live
server... they want to know what the advantages are over using FastCGI
(which is a simple Apache mod install).

What makes Mongrel different that FastCGI?

What are the pros and cons of both?

Thank you for any feedback... I''m off to rdo more research!

Matt
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On 10/04/07 Matt M. said:
> What makes Mongrel different that FastCGI?
Personally, I find FastCGI''s implementation in apache to be buggy, but
that''s
my experience. 

I just found the --prefix argument in mongrel, and it just saved Rails from
the rather shortsighted assumption that all Rails sites will be deployed at
the root of the site. 

As a side-question, does anyone know how to make Rails compose URLs properly
without using --prefix in mongrel?

Thanks,
Mike
-- 
Michael P. Soulier <msoulier at digitaltorque.ca>
"Any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex... It
takes a touch of genius - and a lot of courage to move in the opposite
direction." --Albert Einstein
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My personal experiences with FastCGI have been buggy and just not very agile
at all. Setting up FastCGI was always a pain so I tried mongrel which was
just more simple and much less buggy. FastCGI is a little faster than
mongrel because mongrel has to use TCP and FCGI uses unix sockets. But if
you plan on scaling your application(s) to more machines then TCP (mongrel)
is clearly better than using unix sockets (FCGI). So my two main arguments
are agility and scalability. Additionally mongrel has some nice features
that just make life better.
Kyle Kochis

On 4/10/07, Matt M. <goodieboy at gmail.com>
wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> I''ve recently deployed a rails app and our platform is Apache 2.2
+
> mongrel cluster. It seems to be working fine... although no real tests yet.
> I just recently found out that it is *quite* possible that the live server
> will not be getting an update to apache 2.2, and the current version is
> 1.3. So... I''ve installed Apache 1.3 + FastCGI on the dev server
and it''s
> running fine but...
>
> In order to get any chance of having the admins upgrade Apache on the live
> server... they want to know what the advantages are over using FastCGI
> (which is a simple Apache mod install).
>
> What makes Mongrel different that FastCGI?
>
> What are the pros and cons of both?
>
> Thank you for any feedback... I''m off to rdo more research!
>
> Matt
>
> _______________________________________________
> Mongrel-users mailing list
> Mongrel-users at rubyforge.org
> http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/mongrel-users
>
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The simple answer -- but one that probably won''t satisfy your sysadmins
-- is that Mongrel is just easier to work with.

It''s a tool built specifically around Rails/Ruby, and as such it
includes a lot of niceties that make using it a generally more pleasant
experience.

In my experience this is especially true if a) you are doing a lot of
active development (because restarting the server and debugging is a lot
easier than with FastCGI), and/or b) you plan on scaling later on with
something like Mongrel cluster. Keep in mind that even though this might
be a production environment, in the early stages of development you will
probably find yourself having to debug things on the production
instance. Environment-specific bugs will almost always show up. This is
where FastCGI can be extremely annoying compared to Mongrel.


Matt M. wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I''ve recently deployed a rails app and our platform is Apache 2.2
+ mongrel
> cluster. It seems to be working fine... although no real tests yet. I just
> recently found out that it is *quite* possible that the live server will
> not
> be getting an update to apache 2.2, and the current version is 1.3. So...
> I''ve installed Apache 1.3 + FastCGI on the dev server and
it''s running fine
> but...
> 
> In order to get any chance of having the admins upgrade Apache on the live
> server... they want to know what the advantages are over using FastCGI
> (which is a simple Apache mod install).
> 
> What makes Mongrel different that FastCGI?
> 
> What are the pros and cons of both?
> 
> Thank you for any feedback... I''m off to rdo more research!
> 
> Matt
> 
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Mongrel-users mailing list
> Mongrel-users at rubyforge.org
> http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/mongrel-users


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* "Michael P. Soulier" <msoulier at digitaltorque.ca>
[2007-04-10 12:55]:
>As a side-question, does anyone know how to make Rails compose URLs properly
>without using --prefix in mongrel?
Add this to environment.rb:
    ActionController::AbstractRequest.relative_url_root = "/blah"

Actually, there''s a little more to it than that if you want your
public directory to work.

See:
http://www.ralree.info/2006/6/15/successful-settings-for-apache-forwarding-to-mongrel

-Ross.

On 4/10/07, Grant Hollingworth <grant at antiflux.org>
wrote:
> * "Michael P. Soulier" <msoulier at digitaltorque.ca>
[2007-04-10 12:55]:
> >As a side-question, does anyone know how to make Rails compose URLs
properly
> >without using --prefix in mongrel?
>
> Add this to environment.rb:
>     ActionController::AbstractRequest.relative_url_root = "/blah"
> _______________________________________________
> Mongrel-users mailing list
> Mongrel-users at rubyforge.org
> http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/mongrel-users
>