Just spent 40+ hours in two days deploying my app on Windows 2000. Not all the time was Apache/MySql related, but a significant portion was. What a nightmare that was. Unfortunately, the customer is dead-set on "standardizing" by using Windows. So, as I sat there between a Linux box and an AIX box working on this thing, I ran into problems, part of which were: CGI was slow (Dell PowerEdge 2500, P III 1.4GHz, 1G RAM, PERC Raid). FastCGI refused to work. It complained and wanted me to see the FastCgiIpcDir command, which I could never get to help the situation. WebRick couldn''t be made into a service (you can with FireDaemon) to start on boot. When trying to write a monitor program (such as Mon that you can set up with a few clicks of Webmin on a non-Windows box), I installed mysql.so from somewhere so I could use ruby-mysql (or mysql-ruby) which I couldn''t compile myself on this box. That broke one part of my program. Five of six controllers worked fine, one would not. Never got the Mailer to work (it isn''t a show stopper). Something about the From header was broken. If it wasn''t that, there were relaying complaints from Earthlink (try authenticating (no kidding!)) when trying to use NetCat or email. StatementInvalid errors (on things like ''SELECT * FROM users'') when using XAMPP. Had to downgrade to MySQL 4.0.23. Ruby processes left all over the place when the above things were dying. They couldn''t be ''End Process''ed or ''kill''ed from Cygwin. This forced /long/ reboots on this server with it''s RAID array, etc. Folders locked from the aforementioned zombie processes. In despiration, tried Apache-1.x.x on Cygwin, slow as molasses. I finally wound up with Apache-2.x.x, MySql-4.0.23-debug, don''t recall if I got FastCgi to work or not, I have the httpd.conf somewhere in my repository. Rails apps don''t run well on IE 3 or whatever comes with Windows 95. Not that they should. Of course I created some problems of my own, such as the mysql.so one, naming one of my directories incorrectly, etc. Now I''ll add Tests to check for some of these things. Things I Appreciate Even More Working on my Mac. My new favorite editor TextMate. Ruby, Ruby on Rails, Apache, MySQL and all their contributors. The test Redhat 7.3 server that was a breeze to setup in my garage. The Fedora Core 3 server that was a breeze to setup in my garage. The help I get from this list. My Aeron chair. Not sure of the reason for this post. Just wanted to vent a little. Regards, JJ
Hi John, I have never managed to get Rails working on my Windows XP box. Something always fails. But I managed to install Colinux/Debian (www.colinux.org) with lighttpd/fastcgi which is considerably faster than Cygwin. So you might want to investigate. It is a little bit like cheating. But it is so nice to have a real OS running as a service in Windows. The way I see it, it is the best solution for deploying on Windows. Cygwin is good for many things, but when it gets serious and a lot of stuff is running it has always bailed out on me. Sascha
John, I''m not sure if/how I can help, but Rails runs on my box with MySQL 4.1.10, Apache 2.0.53, Ruby 1.8.2 and Rails 0.10.0. I haven''t tried FastCGI on Windows, but it seems that creating C:/tmp might be the only thing it needs. I want to try lighttpd in Cygwin next. If there''s a question I can answer, feel free to ask. Sascha Ebach wrote:> Hi John, > > I have never managed to get Rails working on my Windows XP box. > Something always fails. But I managed to install Colinux/Debian > (www.colinux.org) with lighttpd/fastcgi which is considerably faster > than Cygwin. So you might want to investigate. It is a little bit like > cheating. But it is so nice to have a real OS running as a service in > Windows. The way I see it, it is the best solution for deploying on > Windows. Cygwin is good for many things, but when it gets serious and a > lot of stuff is running it has always bailed out on me. > > Sascha > _______________________________________________ > Rails mailing list > Rails-1W37MKcQCpIf0INCOvqR/iCwEArCW2h5@public.gmane.org > http://lists.rubyonrails.org/mailman/listinfo/rails---------- Scanned for viruses by ClamAV
On Sun, 6 Mar 2005 12:19:55 -0500, John Johnson <johnatl-ee4meeAH724@public.gmane.org> wrote:> Not sure of the reason for this post. Just wanted to vent a little.Venting''s fine. If you want my opinion, windows is terrible and your client is a moron. Tell him he''s asking you to do the impossible, and then set up a sleek little linux box running lighttpd/fastcgi and impress him with it. No, wait -- do that in the opposite order. Impress him with linux first, then tell him windows is impossible. -- One Guy With A Camera http://rbpark.ath.cx
On 06-Mar-2005, at 13:25, Sascha Ebach wrote:> Hi John, > > I have never managed to get Rails working on my Windows XP box. > Something always fails. But I managed to install Colinux/Debian > (www.colinux.org) with lighttpd/fastcgi which is considerably faster > than Cygwin. So you might want to investigate. It is a little bit like > cheating. But it is so nice to have a real OS running as a service in > Windows. The way I see it, it is the best solution for deploying on > Windows. Cygwin is good for many things, but when it gets serious and > a lot of stuff is running it has always bailed out on me. >Thanks for that Sascha! I''ve never heard of Colinux, I''ll give it a try. Who knows, it may be part of the next "upgrade" they get :-) Regards, JJ
On 06-Mar-2005, at 13:54, Kevin Williams wrote:> I''m not sure if/how I can help, but Rails runs on my box with MySQL > 4.1.10, Apache 2.0.53, Ruby 1.8.2 and Rails 0.10.0. I haven''t tried > FastCGI on Windows, but it seems that creating C:/tmp might be the > only thing it needs. I want to try lighttpd in Cygwin next. > >Thanks for the offer Kevin. I guess I just needed to blow off a little steam. I thought about lighttpd in Cygwin, but I have only used lighttpd on my Mac briefly. It crashed just a few queries after I started it, so I stopped using it. Could have been something I did too. Don''t remember if I compiled from source, etc. Thanks again, JJ
On 06-Mar-2005, at 16:39, Rob Park wrote:>> Not sure of the reason for this post. Just wanted to vent a little. > > Venting''s fine. If you want my opinion, windows is terrible and your > client is a moron. Tell him he''s asking you to do the impossible, and > then set up a sleek little linux box running lighttpd/fastcgi and > impress him with it. No, wait -- do that in the opposite order. > Impress him with linux first, then tell him windows is impossible. >Well, moron is a little harsh. He''s always easy to get along with. Maybe "misguided" would be a better choice of words. There is already one convert in their IT department, but she hasn''t been able to make any inroads either. They recently installed eight Windows 2003 servers and have nothing but trouble with them. Maybe he can be won over soon :-) Thanks, JJ
Basecamp and tadalist run on lighttpd> It crashed just a few queries after I > started it, so I stopped using it. Could have been something I did too. > Don''t remember if I compiled from source, etc.-- Tobi http://www.snowdevil.ca - Snowboards that don''t suck http://www.hieraki.org - Open source book authoring http://blog.leetsoft.com - Technical weblog
Sascha Ebach wrote:> Hi John, > > I have never managed to get Rails working on my Windows XP box. > Something always fails. But I managed to install Colinux/Debian > (www.colinux.org) with lighttpd/fastcgi which is considerably faster > than Cygwin. So you might want to investigate. It is a little bit like > cheating. But it is so nice to have a real OS running as a service in > Windows. The way I see it, it is the best solution for deploying on > Windows. Cygwin is good for many things, but when it gets serious and > a lot of stuff is running it has always bailed out on me. > > Sascha > _______________________________________________ > Rails mailing list > Rails-1W37MKcQCpIf0INCOvqR/iCwEArCW2h5@public.gmane.org > http://lists.rubyonrails.org/mailman/listinfo/rails >In case it helps - I think I have FastCGI working with Apache 2.0.53 on Windows XP SP2 now, after hours of trial and error. I am just starting with Rails, have worked through the two "Rolling with Ruby on Rails" tutorials using WEBrick, and am moving on to the "Four Days on Rails" article, which uses Apache/FastCGI (but doesn''t explain how to set it up). The following notes distil out the successful bits of what I did. (I haven''t been back to square one and worked through again to check, so it''s possible I have missed something.) I downloaded Apache 2.0.53 and installed it using all the defaults. Following "Four Days on Rails", I made a c:\www\webroot directory. In there, I executed rails ToDo Following the directions in "Four Days on Rails", for local use on this PC, I added to C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc\hosts 127.0.0.1 todo and added to the Apache conf\httpd.conf file <VirtualHost *> ServerName todo DocumentRoot /www/webroot/ToDo/public <Directory /www/webroot/ToDo/public/ > Options ExecCGI FollowSymlinks AllowOverride all Allow from all Order allow,deny </Directory> </VirtualHost> ...so when I''m ready, I should find my application at http://todo/ Still in httpd.conf, I uncommented the following lines: LoadModule rewrite_module modules/mod_rewrite.so AddHandler cgi-script .cgi (Use the configuration checker, then restart Apache.) I changed the shebang line in ToDo\public\dispatch.* (3 files) to #!c:\ruby\bin\rubyw.exe Now I can look at http://todo/ and see the Rails introduction. I downloaded the One-Click Ruby for Apache Installer from http://rubyforge.org/projects/rubyforapache and installed it. Following the instructions in its README file: Add these to httpd.conf: LoadModule fastcgi_module modules/mod_fastcgi.so <IfModule mod_fastcgi.c> AddHandler fastcgi-script .fcgi </IfModule> (Check the configuration, restart Apache.) In the "default rewriting rules" section of ToDo\public\.htaccess change any occurrences of "dispatch.cgi" to "dispatch.fcgi" There''s one: RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /dispatch.fcgi?$1 [QSA,L] Now I can still look at http://todo/ and see the Rails introduction. Windows Task Manager shows three rubyw.exe processes each with about 18 MB. Restart Apache and they go away (until the next Rails request). Viewing the Rails introduction and tapping the refresh button slowly, I can see the CPU hit on each rubyw.exe process in turn. So.. it looks as if FastCGI is working, and I can go on to build the application. regards Justin
Heya :) (comments below inline)> -----Original Message----- > From: rails-bounces-1W37MKcQCpIf0INCOvqR/iCwEArCW2h5@public.gmane.org [mailto:rails- > bounces-1W37MKcQCpIf0INCOvqR/iCwEArCW2h5@public.gmane.org] On Behalf Of John Johnson > Sent: Sunday, March 06, 2005 7:15 PM > To: Rob Park; rails-1W37MKcQCpIf0INCOvqR/iCwEArCW2h5@public.gmane.org > Subject: Re: [Rails] A Nightmare on Rails Street: Windows Lives! > > Well, moron is a little harsh. He''s always easy to get along with. > Maybe "misguided" would be a better choice of words. There is already > one convert in their IT department, but she hasn''t been able to make > any inroads either. They recently installed eight Windows 2003 servers > and have nothing but trouble with them. Maybe he can be won over soon > :-)Maybe your client needs new IT people (excepting yourself!). There shouldn''t be any real problem with 2003 server boxes if the folks setting them up are minimally competent. MS does a lot wrong in life, but sometimes the do it right. 2K3 is rock solid, fast, secure and trivial to administer. It seems most of the problems with Rails and Windows have nothing to do with rails OR windows - it has to do with bad or incomplete ports of the tools rails depends on (or seems to). A decent ISAPI module of Ruby and / or decent IIS FastCGI support should really be a bit higher on someones priority list if they want to make real inroads into the Windows camps. Get them used to using open source... then wean them away from the rest if you want. I work with a number of clients who had IT folks try and force them to move from a perfectly stable IIS / SQL Server environment to Apache simply because their language of choice had bad IIS support - and in the end they rarely come away thinking IIS is bad - they come away going "that opens source sutff is cute, but even the guy who was pushing it couldn''t get it to work". If completed several client projects and started a few others since I learned about rails - each one I would have been happy to use rails on but I am not going to move away from a completely useful combination (Win2K3 / IIS) to Apache (thus sacraficing ASP.NET and a whoel host of other goodies) just to support Ruby. Soulhuntre ------------------ My thoughts: http://weblog.soulhuntre.com My legacy: http://www.the-estate.com My girls: http://www.girl2.com
Kevin Williams wrote:> John, > > I''m not sure if/how I can help, but Rails runs on my box with MySQL > 4.1.10, Apache 2.0.53, Ruby 1.8.2 and Rails 0.10.0. I haven''t tried > FastCGI on Windows, but it seems that creating C:/tmp might be the > only thing it needs. I want to try lighttpd in Cygwin next.I have the same configuration above as well on Win XP/SP2. FastCGI works fine, as does mod_ruby, SQLite2, and SQLite3. No problems whatsoever here. John Johnson wrote:> Ruby processes left all over the place when the above things were > dying. They couldn''t be ''End Process''ed or ''kill''ed from Cygwin.You wouldn''t happen to have been running Windows Apache2 with the Cygwin version of Ruby instead of a native windows version of Ruby? BTW, Webrick can be installed as a service using the cygrunsrv utility under cygwin with cygwin ruby or with the srvany utility windows using windows ruby. -- J. Lambert