Rails - Dec 2005 - 500 Error running the dispatchers in Apache?

I am running Rails 0.14.3 on a RedHat Linux server (at Rackspace if it 
matters).

I have a completely vanilla installation of Rails set up, with one 
controller and an index method that does nothing and a template that 
just outputs "Hello!".  Nothing fancy.

When I load up WEBrick, I can hit the controller URL and it works fine. 
I see my template, all is well.

When I hit the controller URL via Apache (1.3.27), I get a "Status: 500 
Internal Server Error".  Nothing at all appears in the 
log/development.log file either.

Now this is running on a virtual host, and I have confirmed that all my 
suexec permissions are correct (in fact if I put a small "Hello World"
Ruby CGI in the folder, with all the same ownership and permissions, it 
runs fine - I am fairly confident this isn''t the problem).

So I started tracing back through the Rails codebase from the 
dispatch.cgi file, outputting some messages as I went, to figure out 
where the script was actually failing.  I inspected the cgi object that 
is returned in the ''dispatch'' method in dispatcher.rb in the
actual
rails gem, and it looks like this:

#CGI:0x409fb4b0 @multipart=false, 
@cookies={"__utma"=>["11232945.1217992048.1134517517.1134517517.1134517517.1"],
"_session_id"=>["598ed6bd708ed7ca716350153e277926"], 
"__utmc"=>["11232945"], 
"__utmz"=>["11232945.1134517517.1.1.utmccn=(direct)|utmcsr=(direct)|utmcmd=(none)"]},
@output_hidden=nil, @output_cookies=nil, @params={}

The request object looks like this:

#ActionController::CgiRequest:0x409fb4d8 
@session_options={:session_path=>"/",
:prefix=>"ruby_sess.",
:database_manager=>CGI::Session::PStore}, @cgi=#<CGI:0x409fb4b0 
@multipart=false, 
@cookies={"__utma"=>["11232945.1217992048.1134517517.1134517517.1134517517.1"],
"_session_id"=>["598ed6bd708ed7ca716350153e277926"], 
"__utmc"=>["11232945"], 
"__utmz"=>["11232945.1134517517.1.1.utmccn=(direct)|utmcsr=(direct)|utmcmd=(none)"]},
@output_hidden=nil, @output_cookies=nil, @params={}

Now, where this actually falls apart is during the process that happens 
a few lines lower, here:

ActionController::Routing::Routes.recognize!(request).process(request, 
response).out(output)

I managed to figure out (I think) that the process command is being 
executed on a returned object of type controller, in 
actionpack/lib/controller/action_controller/base.rb

Within there I followed it to the "assign_shortcuts" method (which
takes
the request and response objects as parameters) and it fails on the line

@response.session = request.session

If I put in output before that line, it works fine, if I put output 
after that line, it doesn''t show up, so this seems to be where the 
exception is being thrown?

I continued to dig into the session stuff a bit but that''s when I got 
totally lost.  My controller isn''t even starting up a session, unless 
this happens automatically?

Any help would be greatly appreciated, I feel I''m so close to getting 
this going, but I''m still new-ish to Ruby and to Rails as well..

Thanks alot,
Seb

-- 
Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.

Seb Barre wrote:
> Within there I followed it to the "assign_shortcuts" method
(which takes
> the request and response objects as parameters) and it fails on the line
> 
> @response.session = request.session
> 
> If I put in output before that line, it works fine, if I put output 
> after that line, it doesn''t show up, so this seems to be where the
> exception is being thrown?
> 
> I continued to dig into the session stuff a bit but that''s when I
got
> totally lost.  My controller isn''t even starting up a session,
unless
> this happens automatically?
Try deleting old sessions. On Unix, /tmp/ruby_sess*

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We develop, watch us RoR, in numbers too big to ignore.