Search results matching tags 'FastCGI' and 'RubyOnRails'

Ruby on Rails in IIS 7.0 with URL Rewriter

Anonymous — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 17:57:15 GMT

If you ever tried to set up Ruby on Rails (RoR) on IIS 7.0 with FastCGI you have probably noticed that the process is not very straightforward. There are a few workarounds that need to be applied in order for RoR to function correctly. In particular, handling of static files in your web application can be tricky on IIS 7.0. The problem is that RoR uses clean URL’s that look similar to this: http://mysite.com/home/about. In order for RoR to be invoked for this kind of URL’s it is necessary to create a “catch all” handler mapping in IIS (that is a handler mapping with path attribute set to “*“). When you create such a handler mapping it will cause requests for static files to be routed to RoR, which will obviously fail to handle them.

For RoR to work correctly on IIS with FastCGI it needs to behave like a 404 handler, meaning that it should be invoked only if the requested URL does not exist as a file on a physical file system. The default IIS configuration does not allow this kind of configuration, so there are several workarounds available today - this article describes them in great details. However, these workarounds are either not recommended for production usage or are not easy to configure. In this post I will explain how URL Rewrite Module for IIS 7.0 can be used to configure IIS and RoR to work correctly with static files.

First let’s setup RoR. To set it up I used instructions from these two great articles:

Mike Volodarsky’s 10 steps to get Ruby on Rails running on Windows with IIS FastCGI
Ruby On Rails wiki article How To Configure IIS7

Both articles are a bit outdated, so I ended up with performing the following steps:

Step 1: Installed latest version of Ruby by using One-Click Installer. At the time of writing this post the latest stable version was 1.8.6-26.

Step 2: Installed Rails by running gem installer from command line window:

gem intsall rails --include-dependencies

Step 3: Installed RoR extensions for IIS. After installation completed I checked that everything was setup successfully by typing the following in the command line window:

C:\>irb
irb(main):001:0> require 'fcgi'
=> true
irb(main):002:0> quit

Step 4: Created a web site in IIS with physical path C:\inetpub\ruby and with host name “ruby”. Also modified the %WINDIR%\system32\drivers\etc\hosts file to include this line:

127.0.0.1 ruby

Note that if you want to have RoR application in the “Default Web Site” in IIS you do not need to do this step.

Step 5: Created a test RoR application in a root folder of a web site:

cd c:\inetpub\ruby
rails myapp
cd myapp
ruby script\generate controller test index

Step 6: Created a temporary FastCGI handler mapping for RoR:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<configuration>
  <system.webServer>
    <handlers>
      <add name="Ruby via FastCGI"
        path="*"
        verb="*"
        modules="FastCgiModule"
        scriptProcessor="C:\ruby\bin\ruby.exe|c:\inetpub\ruby\myapp\public\dispatch.fcgi development"
        resourceType="Unspecified" requireAccess="Script" />
    </handlers>
  </system.webServer>
</configuration>

Step 7: Modified the RoR application to display some meaningful information. For that I opened the app\controller\test_controller.rb file and pasted the following code into it:

class TestController < ApplicationController
   def index
      render :text=>"The index action"
   end
   def about
      render :text=>"The about action"
   end
end

Step 8: Tested that my RoR application works by browsing to http://ruby/test/about

Now let me show you why the handler mapping, that I have created in step 6, is problematic. If I try to request a static image file in my application I get this response:

This is because the “catch all” handler mapping for RoR causes the HTTP request for static file to be given to RoR. RoR tries to match the requested URL against all the routes defined for the application and since there is no route defined for static file the routing error is raised.

Now we will use URL rewrite module to fix this problem. First, let’s take a look at this article that explains how RoR is supposed to be setup on Apache Web Server. According to this article, RoR relies on Apache mod_rewrite to always rewrite requested URL’s to dispatch.fcgi unless the requested file already exists on a file system. Let’s try to configure IIS URL rewrite module to do the same. To do that we will take these scary looking mod_rewrite rules:

# Redirect all requests not available on the filesystem to Rails
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^$ index.html [QSA]
RewriteRule ^([^.]+)$ $1.html [QSA]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ dispatch.fcgi [QSA,L]

and import them into IIS by using “Import Rules” feature of URL rewrite module:

After saving the converted rules into the web.config file we will need to modify the handler mapping for RoR so that it does not use “*” mapping anymore:

<handlers>
  <add name="Ruby via FastCGI"
       path="dispatch.fcgi"
       verb="*"
       modules="FastCgiModule"
       scriptProcessor="C:\ruby\bin\ruby.exe|c:\inetpub\ruby\myapp\public\dispatch.fcgi development"
       resourceType="Unspecified" requireAccess="Script" />
</handlers>

Now let’s test whether these modifications help to resolve the problem with serving static files. First we confirm that the RoR application still works. For that we browse to http://ruby/test/about again:

Then we check if requests for static files are handled correctly. For that we browse to http://ruby/myapp/public/images/rails.png:

As you can see the mod_rewrite rules that were imported from RoR documentation work quite well in IIS. The Ruby on Rails application is fully functional and we did not use any workarounds for that - all the necessary functionality is available in IIS 7.0.

FastCGI with Ruby on Rails - IIS 5.1 / IIS 6 - Http POST issue.

mspeight — Fri, 15 Jun 2007 01:30:51 GMT

I have got IIS and Multiple App's to talk using same technique’s as I used with isap_fcgi.dll, all works fine apart from an intermittent problem.

After returning data from a POST, the rubyw.exe process is left in some funny state, and the next request causes rubyw.exe to exit.

The same request may work 3 times, then crash on the 4^th.

Steps are as follows POST -> Returns a Redirect -> GET on Redirfect fails to return (ruby.exe exits) -> Browser has another go new instance of ruby.exe started and page returned

Other Steps are POST -> Returns just render_text -> Another browser instance goes to url -> No page/error is returned (i.e. the new request got to rubyw but it crashed)

I have duplicated this with a simple form, that posts and returns itself.

It seems to be a timing thing, But I cant figure out the cause.

PS: I have patched the cgi.rb (To remove the IIS reference, if you don’t you get random crashes ay any time)

Anyone come across this before.

-----------------

By set-up is detailed here http://mspeight.blogspot.com/2007/05/how-to-run-multiple-rails-apps-under.html (but uses fcgiext.dll instead of isapi_fcgi.dll). I did need to repatch the "AbstractRequest:request_uri" differently as this FastCGI does provide REQUEST_URI

Directory Listing Denied

armanddp — Mon, 28 May 2007 22:26:16 GMT

I know this is probably not directly related to the FastCGI handler but after configuring my site in IIS to support Ruby on Rails following the 10 steps instructions over here I can't get the default document to work. i.e., when people browse to http://mysite.com/ they get directory listing denied but when browsing to a controller fastcgi kicks in and my Rail application works.

I know I'm missing something obvious but for the life of me can't get it to serve a default document. I've tried various default document combinations. Tried the isapirewrite4 filter to rewrite requests to dispatch.fcgi and in a short ritual offered a small chicken to the web gods but still no luck.

Any suggestions would really be appreciated. (Great work on the fastcgi handler, apart from the default doc issue it seems to be working like a charm)

Cannot disable Ruby logging when using fastcgi?

Stoo — Sun, 01 Apr 2007 20:20:40 GMT

I'm not sure if the problem I have is something that can be fixed on the fastcgi end of things, but thought I would post to see if anyone else had come across the same issue...

When I set the log_level to :none in my rails app's config, It will not start when running through fastcgi. The rails app will still start from command line Ruby, and will also start using the Mongrel web service gem for Ruby. It only fails when calling it through FastCGI.

If I set the logging to anything other than ":none" (like :info), then everything works just fine.

Sadly, under windows, Ruby only writes one log file, and never releases the lock on that file until you kill the app... Makes disk space a wee bit of an issue when the site needs to be up 24/7 :-)

Any pointers in the right direction greatly appreciated as always. - especially as this may not be something that can be fixed in the fastcgi component!

Getting Ruby to stay in memory under fastcgi.

Stoo — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 22:27:52 GMT

First up, let me just say that this FastCGI for IIS has solved many stability issues that we had with older fastcgi products.

We do have one last issue to resolve however. We run Ruby on Rails under FastCGI on IIS6.0 (2k3SP1). We also run Postgres on these servers, but nothing else.

When we make our first request to the server, it takes a few seconds for the Rubyw.exe to start up and compile our code. Once it is started, everything appears to be fairly snappy and generally runs well. Our problem is that after around 5 minutes of being idle, the rubyw.exe process terminates. Another one will start as soon as a request is made, but this makes for a fairly slow browsing experience for our users as they often have to wait for the ruby app to "spin up".

Is there a way to keep these ruby processes running in memory for a lot longer? I've tried tweaking the "InstanceTimeout" value in fcgiext.ini, but this appears to have no effect whatsoever, and the processes still seem to terminate after about 5 minutes.

Any help, or clues that may lead me in the right direction are muchly appreciated! We've solved so many other problems along the way that we've had, this seems to be the last little hurdle to using this solution in production!

Stoo

10 steps to get Ruby on Rails running on Windows with IIS FastCGI

mvolo — Sun, 18 Feb 2007 21:20:00 GMT

Since the original tech preview release of FastCGI last year, we've been seeing a lot of requests for getting Ruby on Rails running with our FastCGI. So, for FastCGI Tech Preview 2, I spent some time researching what it would take to enable Ruby on Rails, resulting in "experimental" RoR support in the TP2 release.

Without further ado, these are the 10 steps get RoR working with FastCGI TP2 - read more at http://mvolo.com/blogs/serverside/archive/2007/02/18/10-steps-to-get-Ruby-on-Rails-running-on-Windows-with-IIS-FastCGI.aspx.

Where can I find error logs for the FCGI handler

mcmoyer — Mon, 05 Feb 2007 21:53:38 GMT

I'm currently trying to set up FastCGI with Ruby on rails. I haven't gotten very far :)

Anyway, I haven't progressed beyond this error message:

FastCGI Handler Extension

Error 0x80004005 occurred processing request.

The FastCGI process exited unexpectedly

I'm trying to find where the extension might be logging to. Thanks!

Marlon

Re: Support for other application frameworks

pboling — Fri, 08 Dec 2006 19:10:25 GMT

Mike,

Thanks for the response!

Before your response I had posted about this to the rails core team mailing list (I am not on the team, just on the list) and it has recieved some response, so you may want to check it out (it's a Google Groups mailing list):

http://groups.google.com/group/rubyonrails-core/browse_thread/thread/b88ad36ddd82477e

I would love to test, and help however I can. Is there a more recent version than the 'technical preview' I have already downloaded? I am a Mac / Linux guy, and am a bit shaky in Windows, but I am deploying my site on Windows Server 2003 so I need to learn it. Right now I am using mongrel as the webserver because it 'just works'. But I need to find a better solution because mongrel has no NTLM authentication module.

Thanks,

Peter

Re: Using DOCUMENT_ROOT in FastCGI environment

pboling — Fri, 08 Dec 2006 14:35:06 GMT

The link refers to PHP_AUTH_USER which makes sense for PHP. A more generic term is more common in other frameworks I think. AUTH_USER is what I would expect to use in RubyOnRails, and I think IIS already provides this variable when using NTLM authentication. Making sure that this AUTH_USER is available in the FastCGI environment then, would be appreciated.

Re: Support for other application frameworks

pboling — Fri, 08 Dec 2006 13:55:31 GMT

Ruby on Rails (http://www.rubyonrails.com/) support would be excellent! I actually need this in production yesterday, so it would be great to get vendor supported FCGI rather than the hacking I'm doing now to make it work (actually it still doesn't work and I may have to switch to Apache.)