Rails - Apr 2007 - multiple virtual host?

I am trying to serve up two applications from one box.  (It''s not a
commercial system; it''s just a box on my desktop, that I''m
using to test
out RoR.)


SETUP. In my httpd.conf, I''ve got something like

<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerName URL
    ServerAlias URL
    ServerAdmin USER@PLACE
    ProxyPass /APP http://127.0.0.1:8000/APP
    ProxyPassReverse  /APP http://127.0.0.1:8000/APP
    ProxyPass /images http://127.0.0.1:8000/APP/images
</VirtualHost>
<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerName URL
    ServerAlias URL
    ServerAdmin USER@PLACE
    ProxyPass /NEWAPP http://127.0.0.1:8010/NEWAPP
    ProxyPassReverse  /NEWAPP http://127.0.0.1:8010/NEWAPP
    ProxyPass /images http://127.0.0.1:8010/NEWAPP/images
</VirtualHost>

where URL is for my machine, and APP and NEWAPP are the names of two
applications, which I serve up with

mongrel_rails start -d -p 8000 -a 127.0.0.1 -e development --prefix /APP
mongrel_rails start -d -p 8010 -a 127.0.0.1 -e development --prefix
/NEWAPP

THE PROBLEM.  Only one site works.  (The problem is in the setup, not
the site code, because I can make *either* one work by commenting out
parts of my httpd.conf file.)

Q: how should I set up httpd.conf (or mongrel_rails) to serve two
applications from one box?

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The ServerName (and ServerAlias) need to be different for the two 
different virtual hosts. It''s not enough to just proxy them to
different
internal URLs.

b

Dan Kelley wrote:
> I am trying to serve up two applications from one box.  (It''s not
a
> commercial system; it''s just a box on my desktop, that
I''m using to test
> out RoR.)
> 
> 
> SETUP. In my httpd.conf, I''ve got something like
> 
> <VirtualHost *:80>
>     ServerName URL
>     ServerAlias URL
>     ServerAdmin USER@PLACE
>     ProxyPass /APP http://127.0.0.1:8000/APP
>     ProxyPassReverse  /APP http://127.0.0.1:8000/APP
>     ProxyPass /images http://127.0.0.1:8000/APP/images
> </VirtualHost>
> <VirtualHost *:80>
>     ServerName URL
>     ServerAlias URL
>     ServerAdmin USER@PLACE
>     ProxyPass /NEWAPP http://127.0.0.1:8010/NEWAPP
>     ProxyPassReverse  /NEWAPP http://127.0.0.1:8010/NEWAPP
>     ProxyPass /images http://127.0.0.1:8010/NEWAPP/images
> </VirtualHost>
> 
> where URL is for my machine, and APP and NEWAPP are the names of two
> applications, which I serve up with
> 
> mongrel_rails start -d -p 8000 -a 127.0.0.1 -e development --prefix /APP
> mongrel_rails start -d -p 8010 -a 127.0.0.1 -e development --prefix
> /NEWAPP
> 
> THE PROBLEM.  Only one site works.  (The problem is in the setup, not
> the site code, because I can make *either* one work by commenting out
> parts of my httpd.conf file.)
> 
> Q: how should I set up httpd.conf (or mongrel_rails) to serve two
> applications from one box?
> 
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Interesting.  But the URL ("my.computer.com", in the examples below)
is
determined by my system adminstrator and someone who set up a DNS table, 
isn''t it?  I''m confused; the examples I''ve seen
suggest that I can just
invent new URLs, but I don''t see how that can work.

Or is the idea to put something after the "/" in a URL, e.g. to name
the
two sites

my.computer.com/a/APP

for APP, and

my.computer.com/b/NEWAPP

for NEWAPP?

(And, should I therefore be calling mongrel_rails differently?)

I''m sorry I''m being so dense on this.  I''m only
following up, continuing
to be a pest, because I think others might be interested.

D

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You can''t just make up URLs and expect them to work on the open web... 
that''s what DNS is for.

For using strictly on your local machine, you can make up host names and 
put them in your hosts file (/etc/hosts on *nix, google for it on windows).

b

Dan Kelley wrote:
> Interesting.  But the URL ("my.computer.com", in the examples
below) is
> determined by my system adminstrator and someone who set up a DNS table, 
> isn''t it?  I''m confused; the examples I''ve seen
suggest that I can just
> invent new URLs, but I don''t see how that can work.
> 
> Or is the idea to put something after the "/" in a URL, e.g. to
name the
> two sites
> 
> my.computer.com/a/APP
> 
> for APP, and
> 
> my.computer.com/b/NEWAPP
> 
> for NEWAPP?
> 
> (And, should I therefore be calling mongrel_rails differently?)
> 
> I''m sorry I''m being so dense on this.  I''m only
following up, continuing
> to be a pest, because I think others might be interested.
> 
> D
> 
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Given this, I wonder how one can host more than one RoR site on a given 
box, without changing any DNS tables on a higher-up box.

At least from my limited academic perspective, this is an important 
facet of a web scheme.  I have many little websites on my box, e.g. one 
for each course I teach,  one for each multi-author paper I write, one 
for each multi-PI proposal I write, etc.  (I wonder whether the web 
would have spread, in its early academic days, if things weren''t so 
easy.)


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If you don''t want to get another domain name, you may ask other people 
to update their hosts file (/etc/hosts), or you may serve each websites 
on different port.

The idea of virtual host is that requests are forwarded according to the 
domain name of the request.  So that www.abc.com and www.def.com will be 
served differently even though the ip address is the same.

Alternatively, you may obtain multiple IP addresses and bind each site 
to it if you are only serving in local area network.

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My summary so far, for anyone catching this thread with a search:

PHP: users with no special privileges can create dozens of sites using 
the (HOST)/~(USER)/(SITENAME) scheme.  This is done without restarting 
the web server, and without editing (and thus potentially damaging) 
configuration files.

RoR: some special magic is required.  (I''m not sure what, yet.)

Thus PHP is analagous to HTML, in the sense that ease of use is likely 
to create a wide community of experts.  I hope that RoR (and Django and 
the like) can build up such a community somehow.


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Hi Dan,

I believe you have got the wrong idea about virtual host, virtual host 
is for domain name mapping, not subdirectory.  You can do this in rail 
with by updating the route.rb to override the default routing rule, or 
with restful.  I believe restful is the way to go for the 
(HOST)/~(USER)/(SITE) scenario.

You can also create a controller for each user if each user request is 
handled differently.

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I don''t think this has anything to do with Rails.  You would have the
same problem if you were using PHP.  This boils down to a mis-
understanding of the purpose of the VirtualHost directive in Apache.
The way virtual hosts work is to match against the Host header in the
HTTP request (basically the client connects to the server using the
server''s IP but also provides the hostname it was initially asked to
connect to).  So if i set up my DNS zones so that www.blah.com and
www2.blah.com both resolve to the same IP my browser will provide
which of the 2 I asked for to the server when connecting.  Apache then
uses this information to determine which VirtualHost directive to use
to process the request.  The path that is being requested (the /
blah.html in www.blah.com/blah.html) is part of the actual request,
not the HTTP headers and thus not available to Apache at the time when
it needs to make its vhost decision.   If you want to do path based
determination of settings you need to use a <Location> directive
*within* your VirtualHost directive that set up the proxy settings you
wish to use for each location.  Have a look at
http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/mod/core.html#location for more
information (assuming Apache 2.2...similar sections are available for
other version of the Apache server/documentation).

Best of luck!

~Ross

On Apr 3, 9:00 am, Dan Kelley
<rails-mailing-l...-ARtvInVfO7ksV2N9l4h3zg@public.gmane.org>
wrote:
> My summary so far, for anyone catching this thread with a search:
>
> PHP: users with no special privileges can create dozens of sites using
> the (HOST)/~(USER)/(SITENAME) scheme.  This is done without restarting
> the web server, and without editing (and thus potentially damaging)
> configuration files.
>
> RoR: some special magic is required.  (I''m not sure what, yet.)
>
> Thus PHP is analagous to HTML, in the sense that ease of use is likely
> to create a wide community of experts.  I hope that RoR (and Django and
> the like) can build up such a community somehow.
>
> --
> Posted viahttp://www.ruby-forum.com/.

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The only reason "(HOST)/~(USER)/(SITENAME)" works for you is because
the
sysadmin of your server configured apache to map ~username to a 
directory in your home directory. The php then works in this scenario 
because it is just template files, html with php code which mod_php runs 
and replaces.

Rails does not work on this principle. It is for building complete, 
well-architected web applications. The template files (the html with 
ruby embedded) are not publicly accessible because Rails processes the 
file for us and writes the final output into the http socket output stream.

That probably sounds overly academic, but there are very good reasons 
why it is designed that way. Basically, if you just want to embed some 
code into an html file, stick with php.

b

PS: Oh, with correct configuration of apache, you can use the ~user 
stuff with rails as well. However, you''d need edit access to the apache
config and you''d need to know what you are doing.


Dan Kelley wrote:
> My summary so far, for anyone catching this thread with a search:
> 
> PHP: users with no special privileges can create dozens of sites using 
> the (HOST)/~(USER)/(SITENAME) scheme.  This is done without restarting 
> the web server, and without editing (and thus potentially damaging) 
> configuration files.
> 
> RoR: some special magic is required.  (I''m not sure what, yet.)
> 
> Thus PHP is analagous to HTML, in the sense that ease of use is likely 
> to create a wide community of experts.  I hope that RoR (and Django and 
> the like) can build up such a community somehow.
> 
> 
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> If you want to do path based
> determination of settings you need to use a <Location> directive
> *within* your VirtualHost directive 
Thanks, Ross, I''ll check into that.

I''ve been trying to deploy my app for months now.  (A search on this 
forum would illustrate the kindness of strangers who have helped me in 
this, and my very slow understanding of the advice offered.)  Luckily, 
my app is mainly an experiment to see whether RoR will prove useful for 
me, so I have the luxury of revisiting the problem in the evenings or on 
weekends.

I''ve found that the ratio of (effort in learning RoR) to (effort in 
deploying RoR) to be unexpectedly high.  It''s a bit of a shame that
this
ratio is so seldom mentioned in the tutorials that (reasonably) sing the 
praises of RoR.

Oh well, I enjoyed reading the Agile book on RoR, so I guess I''ll buy 
the book on deploying RoR as well ... even though, in the end, I expect 
I''ll just be copying ten lines from the book into my httpd.conf file.

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