Rails - Apr 2006 - Public Directory not accessible

Been trying to deploy my rails app on Redhat ES3, Apache2, FastCGI with 
Plesk all day. Fun stuff. Basically, the issue that I can not solve has 
to do with access to  /public. None of my images, javascripts, etc. are 
working in the app. Trying to access any of these results in a 404 (or 
routing error if in developer mode). Oddly, the 404 file it displays is 
-- you guessed it -- in fact *in* the public directory.

Anyone else ever run into this?

-- 
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Seriously? Nobody here has run into issues with inacessible /public 
directories in Rails on Apache2/FastCGI?

I love being the first. :p

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Ryan Williams wrote:
> Seriously? Nobody here has run into issues with inacessible /public 
> directories in Rails on Apache2/FastCGI?
> 
> I love being the first. :p
Can we get a little more info?  Config files, error logs, things you''ve
tried so far, etc...

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> Can we get a little more info?  Config files, error logs, things
you''ve
> tried so far, etc...
Sure. Sorry. There''s another LONG thread where I went though all that 
stuff which I should have referenced. But to avoid confusion (I''ve 
figured out many of those issues since), I''ll start clean.

I''m running on RedHat ES3 with Plesk 7.5.4 server management
Apache2 is installed at /usr/sbin/httpd
Ruby is at 1.8.4
Rails at 1.1.2
mod_fastcgi-2.4.2

Since I''m using Plesk to manage my hosting service, it has this nasty 
habit of wanting to control things (like it was asked to do... go 
figure). So, anything you write into httpd.conf gets overwritten on 
reboot. You get around this by including additional .conf files in 
/etc/httpd/conf.d/. So, I added the following 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/mydomain.com/httpdocs/myapp/dispatch.fcgi 
-idle-timeout 120 -initial-env RAILS_ENV=production -processes 4
</IfModule>

The User and Group bit ends up being repeated in the httpd.conf, but it 
is necessary since Redhat loads anything in conf.d *before* the user and 
group declarations. Next, I make sure CGI is enabled for the domain in 
Plesk settings (if not, suexec will try to run the script as apache or 
root which results in an application that doesn''t respond. Spent HOURS 
on that one!)

Okay, so I upload myapp (which is set to rake freeze_gems at 1.1.1 btw) 
to the domain root (behind the www root). Chown -R to the correct domain 
user:group and chmod everything 755. I create a symbolic link named 
''myapp'' in the web root pointed to ../myapp/public and make
sure owner
is correct and it is chmod 777 as well. Then I go into 
myapp/public/.htaccess and make sure the dispatch.fcgi is uncommented 
and .cgi version is commented out. Next, I move over to myapp/config/ to 
change environment.rb to production mode. Then double check my 
database.yml settings to make sure they point at the MySQL databases.

All good stuff right?

We''ll cool, I can log into myapp! But wait! I have no images.
That''s
odd. And double-wait! My javascript isn''t loading!! Oh no... all those 
AJAX actions... DEAD! And stylesheets? What are those?? :)
>From that point, I start looking into logs. Oh heck... the apache 
error_log has literally hundreds of these:

[Wed Apr 12 14:08:23 2006] [warn] FastCGI: server 
"/home/httpd/vhosts/mydomain.com/httpdocs/myapp/dispatch.fcgi" has 
failed to remain running for 30 seconds given 3 attempts, its restart 
interval has been backed off to 600 seconds

And likewise, suexec_log:

[2006-04-12 14:08:23]: uid: (apache/apache) gid: (apache/apache) cmd: 
dispatch.fcgi
[2006-04-12 14:08:23]: crit: cannot run as forbidden uid 
(48/dispatch.fcgi)

Hmmm... odd that some of the app runs despite this. Only public is being 
hosed (well, and my logs!).

Did a little more looking around and saw someone suggest to add the 
following to /vendor/rails/railties/lib/fcgi_handler.rb:

require ''rubygems''
require_gem ''fcgi''

since I did indeed install the gems version.

killed any ruby processes, cleaned out /tmp/fastcgi_ipc/, deleted any 
cookies for the domain and did apachectl -k graceful

Went to the site, logged in, still no joy on public dir access. 
Greeeeat.

So, I''m at a complete loss. The only other thing I was about to try in 
desperation to use mod_fcgid instead of mod_fastcgi. I don''t really see
how that would change anything with /public, but I''ll try anything at 
this point.

Thanks for your time! Sorry so long!

Ryan

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

Have you posted the entire VirtualHost block yet? I looked through the 
original thread and didn''t see it. I''m curious to see what you
set your
DocumentRoot too, in particular, so maybe pasting in the whole block 
will shed some light.

Also, I understand you *can* suexec your virtualhost as apache/apache 
since it''s your machine and you can chown to it, but have you tested it
without the suexec and explicit user and group to rule that out as the 
problem?

Ryan Williams wrote:
>> Can we get a little more info?  Config files, error logs, things
you''ve
>> tried so far, etc...
> 
> Sure. Sorry. There''s another LONG thread where I went though all
that
> stuff which I should have referenced. But to avoid confusion (I''ve
> figured out many of those issues since), I''ll start clean.
>.....
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Just FYI, here''s the bulk of my fastcgi and ViurtualHost config. It 
might be helpful even though I''m not using suexec for this one.

Note the docroot set to the public dir, with no trailing slash and the 
Directory block with the AddHandler and the trailing slash on the 
dirname.



<IfModule mod_fastcgi.c>
  FastCgiIpcDir /tmp/fcgi_ipc
  FastCgiServer 
/usr/local/www/rails-apps/kop/current/public/dispatch.fcgi \
    -initial-env RAILS_ENV=production \
    -idle-timeout 60
</IfModule>


<VirtualHost www.myhost.com>
    ServerAdmin webmaster@myhost.com
    DocumentRoot /usr/local/www/rails-apps/kop/current/public
    ServerName www.myhost.com
    ErrorLog /var/log/myhost-error_log
    CustomLog /var/log/myhost-access_log common
    Options Indexes ExecCGI FollowSymLinks
    RewriteEngine On
    ScriptAlias /cgi/ "/usr/local/www/vhosts/myhost.com/cgi/"
  <Directory /usr/local/www/rails-apps/kop/current/public/>
   AllowOverride all
    Order allow,deny
    Allow from all
    AddHandler cgi-script .cgi
    AddHandler fastcgi-script .fcgi
  </Directory>
</VirtualHost>


Steve Koppelman wrote:
> Have you posted the entire VirtualHost block yet? I looked through the 
> original thread and didn''t see it. I''m curious to see
what you set your
> DocumentRoot too, in particular, so maybe pasting in the whole block 
> will shed some light.
> 
> Also, I understand you *can* suexec your virtualhost as apache/apache 
> since it''s your machine and you can chown to it, but have you
tested it
> without the suexec and explicit user and group to rule that out as the 
> problem?
> 
> Ryan Williams wrote:
>>> Can we get a little more info?  Config files, error logs, things
you''ve
>>> tried so far, etc...
>> 
>> Sure. Sorry. There''s another LONG thread where I went though
all that
>> stuff which I should have referenced. But to avoid confusion
(I''ve
>> figured out many of those issues since), I''ll start clean.
>>.....

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

Well, I might be barking up the wrong tree with the /public directory''s
inaccessibility being a server config issue. I just opened one of those 
cheapy GoDaddy accounts with Rails and uploaded my app. I get the exact 
same behavior with them. /public is inaccessible. So, obviously, I must 
be doing something intolerably stupid inside my app. Everything works 
fine locally with WEBrick in development or production mode. I don''t
get
what would be different in that regard with any FastCGI installation.

What would keep the public directory from being seen when not using 
WEBrick?

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

Ryan Williams wrote:
> Trying to access any of these results in a 404 (or 
> routing error if in developer mode). 
Can we see the routing error?
Dan

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

Here is my httpd.include for that domain:

<VirtualHost xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:80>
        ServerName   mydomain.com:80
        ServerAlias  www.mydomain.com
        UseCanonicalName Off
        SuexecUserGroup         mydomain psacln
        ServerAdmin  "nospam@whatever.com"
        DocumentRoot /home/httpd/vhosts/mydomain.com/httpdocs
        CustomLog 
/home/httpd/vhosts/mydomain.com/statistics/logs/access_log plesklog
        ErrorLog 
/home/httpd/vhosts/mydomain.com/statistics/logs/error_log
<IfModule mod_userdir.c>
        UserDir /home/httpd/vhosts/mydomain.com/web_users
</IfModule>
        ScriptAlias  /cgi-bin/ /home/httpd/vhosts/mydomain.com/cgi-bin/
        Redirect permanent /plesk-stat https://mydomain.com/plesk-stat
        Redirect permanent /webstat https://mydomain.com/webstat
        Redirect permanent /webstat-ssl https://mydomain.com/webstat-ssl
        Redirect permanent /ftpstat https://mydomain.com/ftpstat
        Redirect permanent /anon_ftpstat 
https://mydomain.com/anon_ftpstat
        <IfModule mod_ssl.c>
                SSLEngine off
        </IfModule>
        <Directory /home/httpd/vhosts/mydomain.com/httpdocs>
        <IfModule mod_perl.c>
        <Files ~ (\.pl$)>
                SetHandler perl-script
                PerlHandler ModPerl::Registry
                Options ExecCGI
                allow from all
                PerlSendHeader On
        </Files>
        </IfModule>
        <IfModule sapi_apache2.c>
                php_admin_flag engine on
                php_admin_value open_basedir 
"/home/httpd/vhosts/mydomain.com/httpdocs:/tmp"
        </IfModule>
        <IfModule mod_php5.c>
                php_admin_flag engine on
                php_admin_value open_basedir 
"/home/httpd/vhosts/mydomain.com/httpdocs:/tmp"
        </IfModule>
        <IfModule mod_python.c>
        <Files ~ (\.py$)>
                SetHandler python-program
                PythonHandler   mod_python.cgihandler
        </Files>
        </IfModule>
Options -Includes +ExecCGI
        </Directory>
        <Directory /home/httpd/vhosts/mydomain.com/web_users>
        <IfModule sapi_apache2.c>
                AddType text/plain .php .php4 .php3 .phtml
                php_admin_flag engine off
        </IfModule>
        <IfModule mod_php5.c>
                AddType text/plain .php .php5 .php4 .php3 .phtml
                php_admin_flag engine off
        </IfModule>
        </Directory>
        Alias "/error_docs"
"/home/httpd/vhosts/mydomain.com/error_docs"
        ErrorDocument 400 /error_docs/bad_request.html
        ErrorDocument 401 /error_docs/unauthorized.html
        ErrorDocument 403 /error_docs/forbidden.html
        ErrorDocument 404 /error_docs/not_found.html
        ErrorDocument 500 /error_docs/internal_server_error.html
</VirtualHost>


But, as this is all controlled by Plesk, it can not be altered.

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> Can we see the routing error?
> Dan
Sure! This is what''s happening on my server at least. I can''t
see what''s
behind the scenens at GoDaddy. From the production.log...

stylesheet:

ActionController::RoutingError (Recognition failed for 
"/stylesheets/scaffold.css"):
    /vendor/rails/actionpack/lib/action_controller/routing.rb:488:in 
`recognition_failed''
    /vendor/rails/actionpack/lib/action_controller/routing.rb:478:in 
`recognize!''
    /vendor/rails/railties/lib/dispatcher.rb:38:in `dispatch''
    /vendor/rails/railties/lib/fcgi_handler.rb:150:in `process_request''
    /vendor/rails/railties/lib/fcgi_handler.rb:54:in `process!''
    /usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/fcgi-0.8.6.1/./fcgi.rb:600:in 
`each_cgi''
    /usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/fcgi-0.8.6.1/./fcgi.rb:597:in 
`each_cgi''
    /vendor/rails/railties/lib/fcgi_handler.rb:53:in `process!''
    /vendor/rails/railties/lib/fcgi_handler.rb:23:in `process!''
    dispatch.fcgi:24

javascript:

ActionController::RoutingError (Recognition failed for 
"/javascripts/prototype.js"):
    /vendor/rails/actionpack/lib/action_controller/routing.rb:488:in 
`recognition_failed''
    /vendor/rails/actionpack/lib/action_controller/routing.rb:478:in 
`recognize!''
    /vendor/rails/railties/lib/dispatcher.rb:38:in `dispatch''
    /vendor/rails/railties/lib/fcgi_handler.rb:151:in `process_request''
    /vendor/rails/railties/lib/fcgi_handler.rb:55:in `process!''
    /usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/fcgi-0.8.6.1/./fcgi.rb:600:in 
`each_cgi''
    /usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/fcgi-0.8.6.1/./fcgi.rb:597:in 
`each_cgi''
    /vendor/rails/railties/lib/fcgi_handler.rb:54:in `process!''
    /vendor/rails/railties/lib/fcgi_handler.rb:24:in `process!''
    dispatch.fcgi:24


images:

ActionController::RoutingError (Recognition failed for 
"/images/cog_edit.png"):
    /vendor/rails/actionpack/lib/action_controller/routing.rb:488:in 
`recognition_failed''
    /vendor/rails/actionpack/lib/action_controller/routing.rb:478:in 
`recognize!''
    /vendor/rails/railties/lib/dispatcher.rb:38:in `dispatch''
    /vendor/rails/railties/lib/fcgi_handler.rb:151:in `process_request''
    /vendor/rails/railties/lib/fcgi_handler.rb:55:in `process!''
    /usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/fcgi-0.8.6.1/./fcgi.rb:600:in 
`each_cgi''
    /usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/fcgi-0.8.6.1/./fcgi.rb:597:in 
`each_cgi''
    /vendor/rails/railties/lib/fcgi_handler.rb:54:in `process!''
    /vendor/rails/railties/lib/fcgi_handler.rb:24:in `process!''
    dispatch.fcgi:24





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On 4/12/06, Ryan Williams <ryan@jimmyether.com>
wrote:
> Here is my httpd.include for that domain:
Ryan,

What''s your public/.htaccess look like?

I have Rails set up on a (Ubuntu) linux box, and had a strange
problem... I have a Rails app set up in my public_html directory in my
home directory. If I tried to access:

http://myserver/~john/test/public

I would get an error saying it could not find the file:

/home/john/public_html/test/public/index.html  (which obviously was there)

If I then tried to access

http://myserver/~john/test/public/index.html (which should be the same
thing), the default Rails "you have installed Rails" page came up!

After futzing around with Apache config files, I tried adding a
RewriteBase directive to my .htaccess file:

RewriteBase /home/john/public_html/public

and then was able to get to the file. May not be exactly what you are
seeing, but it''s something to check out.

HTH,

jt

Yes! I think you may have just solved this for me! I totally missed the 
RewriteBase comment:

# If your Rails application is accessed via an Alias directive,
# then you MUST also set the RewriteBase in this htaccess file.
#
# Example:
#   Alias /myrailsapp /path/to/myrailsapp/public
#   RewriteBase /myrailsapp

RewriteRule ^$ index.html [QSA]
RewriteRule ^([^.]+)$ $1.html [QSA]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f



BUT, I''m obviously not getting how properly do this. Everything
I''ve
tried results in a 500 or 404 error directly from apache. I have my app 
here behind the httpdocs web root:

/home/httpd/vhosts/mydomain.com/myapp/public

And I have a symbolic link in /home/httpd/vhosts/mydomain.com/httpdocs/ 
like so:

myapp -> ../myapp/public

So, I tried this:

Alias /myapp /home/httpd/vhosts/mydomain.com/myapp/public
RewriteBase /myapp

But that generated a 500 error. And trying something along the lines of 
what you used:

RewriteBase /home/httpd/vhosts/mydomain.com/myapp/public

causes everyting to produce 404 errors from apache.

Suggestions?

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

On 4/12/06, Ryan Williams <ryan@jimmyether.com>
wrote:
> Yes! I think you may have just solved this for me! I totally missed the
> RewriteBase comment:
...
> causes everyting to produce 404 errors from apache.
>
> Suggestions?
In testing, one of my trials had the Alias directive in my .htaccess
file, and it wasn''t working. Checking the Apache error.log file showed
that I couldn''t have an Alias directive in there. So I removed it. I
stuck one into the site config file -
/etc/apache2/sites-available/rails. And I also had to give Apache a
kick - apache2ctl graceful

jt

I gave up on FastCGI. Went with SCGI instead, which is GREAT! No issues 
at all since.

Here''s my addition to the wiki:

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

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