Rails - Sep 2005 - rails_product, vhosts, subdomains, OS X and Dreamhost == Help needed

Hi all,

Being a newbie convert to the Rails world, I am hoping you all can  
help me get going on the right track here.

I am trying to create a development/site set-up for a friend that is  
setting up as a freelance designer (NB! he is NOT a programmer in any  
way!!) He''s hosting with Dreamhost, and will remain there. His  
various sites/sub-domains will contain a lot of common content, but  
each ''site'' being specific in target, essentially promotional
portfolios for different type of markets/purposes.

It seems to me that the rails_product gem should work for this, and I  
have installed it locally already, but have these questions/problems:

1.    Can a rails_product based solution be easily installed and get  
working on DH ? (please provide more info than a yes/no answer)

2.    Can the same rails_product work with both sub-domains and full  
domains ?  ie: sub1.site.com, sub2.site.com, www.site.com,  
www.othersite.com

3.    Developing locally on OS X.4.2, the idea is to run the  
following development structure:

         -- Rails app stored in this central project location  /Users/ 
<user_name>/Projects/<project_name>/<rails_app>/

         -- Accessed through local virtualhosts -  
<rails_product_site_name> - using default Apache installation & fcgi  
(??)
         -- with symlinks (?) inside the [ /Users/<user_name>/Sites/ 
<rails_product_site_name>/ ]  to the
<rails_product_site_name>/public
& log dir''s, so that multiple sites can be viewed simultaneously.
         (Yes, I know about different ports in Webrick, but using  
fcgi in apache should be better and should work automatically without  
needing to start Webrick for each site. Remember designer, not  
programmer)

         -- Common files, .css, .js and images should be stored in  
the public directory of the main site  - www.site.com.

         -- Common features, such as Admin, Login etc, should ideally  
be a global location that would work for all ''sites''.

Given the above scenario (point 3), is this possible ?  How should I  
achieve this in the best, most flexible way ??


Now onto the problems I''ve come across while trying to get this  
working :)

4.    In my trials to get this working, I''ve created the  
<rails_product_app> and a site for it.  I''ve created a
virtualhost -
subdomain.domain.rails - on my local machine that points to the [ / 
Users/<user_name>/Sites/<vhost_name>/ ] directory.

     -- I have tried the included apache vhost config stuff, but  
can''t get it to work at all, with this problem from the  
development.log in the site.

     [Wed Sep  7 21:56:53 2005] [error] [client 127.0.0.1] FastCGI:  
comm with server "/Users/<user_name>/Projects/<project_name>/ 
<rails_app>/sites/design/public/dispatch.fcgi" aborted: idle timeout
(30 sec)
     [Wed Sep  7 21:56:53 2005] [error] [client 127.0.0.1] FastCGI:  
incomplete headers (0 bytes) received from server
"/Users/<user_name>/
Projects/<project_name>/<rails_app>/sites/design/public/dispatch.fcgi"


     -- With the [ Alias /generic /Users/<user_name>/Projects/ 
<project_name>/<rails_app>/public ] not commented out (as it was  
above), I get this 404

     [Thu Sep  8 10:30:52 2005] [error] [client 127.0.0.1] File does  
not exist:
/Users/<user_name>/Projects/<project_name>/<rails_app>/
public/index.html/


I''m kind of stuck on this simple hurdle and can''t move beyond
it, and
don''t really wish to develop further along this line unless the above  
is possible, as I have limited time available for this project.

Very grateful for any help or pointers.  If you need further info,  
please contact me off-list.


Kind regards,

Mats

----
"TextMate, coding with an incredible sense of joy and ease"
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