Rails - Apr 2006 - Apache/FastCGI still in development mode?

I''m running rails on RedHat ES3 managed by Plesk with Apache/FastCGI. 
I''ve followed the directions here:

http://wiki.rubyonrails.com/rails/pages/HowtoInstallAndRunRubyOnRailsOnPlesk

And got everything working, but my application refuses to run in 
Production mode. It runs in development mode despite the fact that I''ve
set:

FastCgiServer /home/httpd/vhosts/USER/httpdocs/rails/dispatch.fcgi 
-idle-timeout 120 -initial-env RAILS_ENV=production -processes 4

in fastcgi.conf and switched the .htaccess file over to:

RewriteRule ^(.*)$ dispatch.fcgi [QSA,L]

What else could possibly be forcing it over to development mode?

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I''m still not finding a solution on this issue. I have confirmed that 
the application is indeed running in development mode by putting <%= 
debug(RAILS_ENV) %> in one of my views. Also, none of my images are 
loading. If I try to access them directly, I get a routing error. 
Looking at the development log (production log is of course empty), I''m
getting routing errors on anything in the public directory (javascript 
libs, stylesheets, images, etc.). This leads me to believe that the 
public directory is not being recognized, which would also mean that the 
.htaccess file with the dispatch.fcgi rule is being ignored. I''ve 
checked owner and permissions on /public and everything in it and all 
seems right. I don''t see how the application would work at all without 
finding the .htaccess. And, based on the fast response, the app 
certainly seems to be using fastCGI. Is there a way to verify this with 
an ENV variable or something?

FWIW, I also created a test application on the server and it too will 
not run in production mode. Definitely seems to be a configuration issue 
with FastCGI somewhere, but I can''t figure out what.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

RedHat el3
Plesk 7.5.4
Ruby 1.8.4
Rails 1.1.2 (and tried 1.1.1 from vendor freeze)

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Are you sure that your fastcgi.conf file is being included by the main 
Apache httpd.conf file?

Wes

Ryan Williams wrote:
> I''m still not finding a solution on this issue. I have confirmed
that
> the application is indeed running in development mode by putting <%= 
> debug(RAILS_ENV) %> in one of my views. Also, none of my images are 
> loading. If I try to access them directly, I get a routing error. 
> Looking at the development log (production log is of course empty),
I''m
> getting routing errors on anything in the public directory (javascript 
> libs, stylesheets, images, etc.). This leads me to believe that the 
> public directory is not being recognized, which would also mean that the 
> .htaccess file with the dispatch.fcgi rule is being ignored. I''ve 
> checked owner and permissions on /public and everything in it and all 
> seems right. I don''t see how the application would work at all
without
> finding the .htaccess. And, based on the fast response, the app 
> certainly seems to be using fastCGI. Is there a way to verify this with 
> an ENV variable or something?
> 
> FWIW, I also created a test application on the server and it too will 
> not run in production mode. Definitely seems to be a configuration issue 
> with FastCGI somewhere, but I can''t figure out what.
> 
> Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
> 
> RedHat el3
> Plesk 7.5.4
> Ruby 1.8.4
> Rails 1.1.2 (and tried 1.1.1 from vendor freeze)

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Wes Gamble wrote:
> Are you sure that your fastcgi.conf file is being included by the main 
> Apache httpd.conf file?
Well, it certainly *seems* to be. I don''t see how the app was running
at
all otherwise. That''s what I''ve been trying to confirm. Oddly,
I was
able to get the simple test app running in production mode finally 
(after a few server and apache restarts), but the main app now will no 
longer respond at all. The browser simply spins with a "Waiting for 
www.mydomain.com" message. And the issue isn''t with the domain
itself,
since .html is being served from other directories.

Frustrating.

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Okay, we have confirmed with our host that FastCGI is indeed working. My 
host checked for syntax errors with "httpd -t". They also created a 
Redirect to ensure that it was working. So, that''s not the issue.

Regardless, even a simple test app for whatever reason will not see 
anything in /public. The index.html produces a 404 and I tried to 
directly call the rails.png that installs by default with the same 
result. It''s public is recursively permissioned 777 and chowned 
correctly. Just for a laugh, I even modified the 404.html which it IS 
showing me and the changes were indeed output. I''m at a total loss. 
Maybe I should bump this to a new post at this point.

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Since this looks like an Apache configuration error, please post more 
than two lines of the relevant parts of your Apache conf files. The 
section regarding configuration of your fcgi module and the entire 
virtualhost block for your app would be a good place to start.

Also, are you deploying a simple copy of your application''s diorectory 
tree or are you deploying with Capistrano?

Ryan Williams wrote:
> Okay, we have confirmed with our host that FastCGI is indeed working. My 
> host checked for syntax errors with "httpd -t". They also created
a
> Redirect to ensure that it was working. So, that''s not the issue.
> 
> Regardless, even a simple test app for whatever reason will not see 
> anything in /public. The index.html produces a 404 and I tried to 
> directly call the rails.png that installs by default with the same 
> result. It''s public is recursively permissioned 777 and chowned 
> correctly. Just for a laugh, I even modified the 404.html which it IS 
> showing me and the changes were indeed output. I''m at a total
loss.
> Maybe I should bump this to a new post at this point.

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Have you checked access rights for you DBMS in production mode ? Is 
database.yml correctly configured ?

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Steve Koppelman wrote:
> Since this looks like an Apache configuration error, please post more 
> than two lines of the relevant parts of your Apache conf files. The 
> section regarding configuration of your fcgi module and the entire 
> virtualhost block for your app would be a good place to start.
This is a Plesk managed system, so it complete controls the vhost blocks 
and there''s no changing them. The FastCGI config is included via a conf
file in /etc/httpd/conf.d/fastcgi.conf:

User apache
Group apache
LoadModule fastcgi_module /usr/lib/httpd/modules/mod_fastcgi.so

<IfModule mod_fastcgi.c>
    FastCgiWrapper on
    FastCgiConfig -idle-timeout 900
    FastCgiIpcDir /tmp/fastcgi_ipc/
    AddHandler fastcgi-script .fcgi .rb
    FastCgiServer 
/home/httpd/vhosts/my1stdomain.com/httpdocs/rails/dispatch.fcgi 
-idle-timeout 120 -initial-env RAILS_ENV=production -processes 4
    FastCgiServer 
/home/httpd/vhosts/my2nddomain.com/httpdocs/myapp/dispatch.fcgi 
-idle-timeout 120 -initial-env RAILS_ENV=production -processes 4
</IfModule>

in the httpd error_log I''m getting TONS of these:

[Tue Apr 11 13:59:19 2006] [warn] FastCGI: server 
"/home/httpd/vhosts/mydomain.com/httpdocs/rails/dispatch.fcgi" has 
failed to remain running for 30 seconds given 3 attempts, its restart 
interval has been backed off to 600 seconds

for either of the apps.
then, in the suexec_log:

[2006-04-11 15:09:19]: uid: (apache/apache) gid: (apache/apache) cmd: 
dispatch.fcgi
[2006-04-11 15:09:19]: crit: cannot run as forbidden uid 
(48/dispatch.fcgi)


The test app at my1stdomain.com/rails/ at least responds, though nothing 
in public is accessible. The actual app that I''m trying to deploy at 
my2nddomain.com/myapp/ won''t even respond.

The test app was created live on the server. The main app that I''m 
trying to deploy was a copy of the directory tree which was tarred, 
unpacked, chowned and chmoded appropriately. The directories reside 
behind the webroot with a symbolic link in the webroot pointing back at 
../myapp/public and are also chowned and chmoded appropriately.

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Nuno wrote:
> Have you checked access rights for you DBMS in production mode ? Is 
> database.yml correctly configured ?
Yes. They are correct. Even if they weren''t though, Rails would throw
me
errors saying such. This isn''t responding at all.

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>From my hosting provider:
It appears that the script is attempting to be executed as either 
apache48 or root

[2006-04-11 17:28:30]: uid: (root/root) gid: (0/0) cmd: dispatch.fcgi
[2006-04-11 17:28:30]: crit: cannot run as forbidden uid 
(0/dispatch.fcgi)


SUExec does not allow this, the script must be executed as the 
user/group that owns that domain.

I''m not sure where this is configured in ruby on rails but you should 
check to be sure that it''s execing as the user that owns the file.

---

Anyone?

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Ryan Williams wrote:
> From my hosting provider:
> 
> It appears that the script is attempting to be executed as either 
> apache48 or root
> 
> [2006-04-11 17:28:30]: uid: (root/root) gid: (0/0) cmd: dispatch.fcgi
> [2006-04-11 17:28:30]: crit: cannot run as forbidden uid 
> (0/dispatch.fcgi)
> 
> 
> SUExec does not allow this, the script must be executed as the 
> user/group that owns that domain.
> 
> I''m not sure where this is configured in ruby on rails but you
should
> check to be sure that it''s execing as the user that owns the file.
> 
> ---
> 
> Anyone?
uh, chown -R your_user.your_group your_app_dir

Doesn''t seem likely, but it''s the only thing that came to
mind.

Here''s what suexec is supposed to be checking:

http://httpd.apache.org/docs/1.3/suexec.html

--Al Evans



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> uh, chown -R your_user.your_group your_app_dir
> 
> Doesn''t seem likely, but it''s the only thing that came to
mind.
> 
> Here''s what suexec is supposed to be checking:
> 
> http://httpd.apache.org/docs/1.3/suexec.html
Thanks Al. Actually, I had tired that (several times). Most of the 
suexec issues were with regard to not having CGI enabled on the domain 
in the Plesk manager. That said, I still have no access to the public 
directory, and FastCGI is spawning all kinds of orphaned processes. I''m
going to try switching to mod_fcgid and see if that helps. Otherwise, I 
think I''ll be begging the guys at http://www.railsmachine.com to go 
ahead and launch their hosting service!

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Plessk, huh? apache48, huh?

1. Is this a non-VPS shared hosting account? If so, in all likelihood 
stuff is going to run only under *your* user and group(s).

2. Where did User and Group "apache" come from? Are they a user and 
group you use, or that you created? Can you create a file and chown it 
to "apache"?

3. Do you do suexecs to users and groups you specify in any non-rails 
apps you have on this host? If so, are those the user and group you get 
on files that those apps write to, say, your temp dir?

Ryan Williams wrote:
> Steve Koppelman wrote:
>> Since this looks like an Apache configuration error, please post more 
>> than two lines of the relevant parts of your Apache conf files. The 
>> section regarding configuration of your fcgi module and the entire 
>> virtualhost block for your app would be a good place to start.
> 
> This is a Plesk managed system, so it complete controls the vhost blocks 
> and there''s no changing them. The FastCGI config is included via a
conf
> file in /etc/httpd/conf.d/fastcgi.conf:
> 
> User apache
> Group apache
> LoadModule fastcgi_module /usr/lib/httpd/modules/mod_fastcgi.so
...:: snip ::

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> 1. Is this a non-VPS shared hosting account? If so, in all likelihood 
> stuff is going to run only under *your* user and group(s).
This is a dedicated server. We simply use Plesk to allow our hosting 
clients to manage their virtual hosting accounts. So, I have complete 
access to the server config within reason (thing that won''t adversly 
effect Plesk!).
> 2. Where did User and Group "apache" come from? Are they a user
and
> group you use, or that you created? Can you create a file and chown it 
> to "apache"?
Literally... here:

http://wiki.rubyonrails.com/rails/pages/HowtoInstallAndRunRubyOnRailsOnPlesk

The frustrating thing being that others have obviously had this working. 
There was also supposedly a detailed three-part guide on setting this up 
at http://www.soapboxconfessional.com, but the guy has since killed his 
server.
> 3. Do you do suexecs to users and groups you specify in any non-rails 
> apps you have on this host? If so, are those the user and group you get 
> on files that those apps write to, say, your temp dir?
Yes, they are all apache:apache as well... without issue.

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And there is now a new thread that clarifies what''s going on with this
a
little better here:

http://www.ruby-forum.com/topic/61866

Please take a look... I would really appreciate it.

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I gave up on FastCGI. Went with SCGI instead, which is GREAT!

Here''s my addition to the wiki:

http://wiki.rubyonrails.org/rails/pages/RailsWithSCGIonPlesk

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