How to install Apache, Ruby, RubyGems, Rails, and FastCGI? under Linux

1. Become root and go to a directory to work in
   

   
   su root
   cd /usr/local/src

2. Download all of the needed files. These versions may be out of date, so you might want to go find the latest.
   

   
   wget http://xyz.csail.mit.edu/ruby/ruby-1.8.5.tar.gz
   wget http://rubyforge.org/frs/download.php/11289/rubygems-0.9.0.tgz
   wget http://www.fastcgi.com/dist/fcgi-2.4.0.tar.gz
   wget http://www.fastcgi.com/dist/mod_fastcgi-2.4.2.tar.gz
   wget http://mirrors.ccs.neu.edu/Apache/dist/httpd/httpd-2.2.3.tar.gz

3. Install Ruby
   

   
   tar -zxvf ruby-1.8.5.tar.gz
   cd ruby-1.8.5
   ./configure
   make
   make test
   make install
   cd ..

4. Install Ruby Gems
   

   
   tar -zxvf rubygems-0.9.0.tgz
   cd rubygems-0.9.0
   ruby setup.rb
   cd ..

5. Install Apache (if needed—if you have an existing Apache installation & know what you are doing this step can be skipped)
   

   
   tar -zxvf httpd-2.2.3.tar.gz
   cd httpd-2.2.3
   ./configure --enable-rewrite --enable-cgi --enable-so
   make
   make install
   cd ..
   

6. Install FastCGI?
   

   
   tar -zxvf fcgi-2.4.0.tar.gz 
   cd fcgi-2.4.0
   ./configure
   make
   make install

7. Install mod_fcgi
   mod_fastcgi is heavily outdated and very hard to install it is better to use mod_fcgid
   

   
   wget http://fastcgi.coremail.cn/mod_fcgid.1.10.tar.gz
   
   tar -zxvf mod_fcgid.1.10.tar.gz
   cd mod_fcgid.1.10
   # in Makefile set top_dir to the top path of you apache i.e. /usr/local/apache2
   make
   make install
   

1. If fcgid is not working for you try installing mod_fastcgi for Apache (note that this assumes you are using Apache-2.x, etc.; if you are using Apache 1.3, DSOs, etc. read the INSTALL file.
   • If you are on the Debian platform and you installed Apache2 via apt-get, here are some Debian mod_fastcgi Notes
   • If you are using Fedora Core and you installed Apache2 with yum and/or an RPM, see this blog post:
     http://jimthompson.org/wp/2005/05/29/building-modfastcgi-for-apache2/
     

     
     cd ..
     tar -zxvf mod_fastcgi-2.4.2.tar.gz
     cd mod_fastcgi-2.4.2
     cp Makefile.AP2 Makefile
     make
     make install

2. Install Rails
   

   
   gem install rails
       :
   Install required dependency rake? [Yn]  y
   Install required dependency activesupport? [Yn]  y
   Install required dependency activerecord? [Yn]  y
   Install required dependency actionpack? [Yn]  y
   Install required dependency actionmailer? [Yn]  y
   Install required dependency actionwebservice? [Yn]  y
       :
   

3. Install the fcgi gem
   

   
   gem install fcgi

   
   On FreeBSD, If you receive “ERROR: While executing gem” stating “checking for fcgiapp.h… no” then you will have to run the gem install with alternate syntax:
   

   
   gem install fcgi -- --with-fcgi-include=/usr/local/include --with-fcgi-lib=/usr/local/lib
   

   
   If you receive an error which contains “can’t find header files for ruby.”, then please install the ruby-devel package.
4. Edit your Apache configuration (typically found somewhere like /usr/local/apache2/conf/httpd.conf or /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf) and add these lines:
   

   
   
       AllowOverride all
   
   
   LoadModule fastcgi_module modules/mod_fastcgi.so
   
   AddHandler fastcgi-script .fcgi
   
   
       ServerAdmin webmaster@example.com
       DocumentRoot /var/www/rails/testapp/public
       ServerName www.example.com
       ErrorLog /var/log/httpd/testapp-error_log
       CustomLog /var/log/httpd/testapp-access_log common
       Options Indexes ExecCGI FollowSymLinks
       RewriteEngine On
   

5. Edit your Apache configuration (with fcgid instead of fastcgi)
   FastCGI is severly outdated, so it is recommended that you use FCGID instead. If you use FCGID two lines in the configuration file will be different:
   

   
   LoadModule fcgid_module modules/mod_fcgid.so
   # in case of mod_fcgid you may want to add 
   
       AddHandler fcgid-script .fcgi
       IPCCommTimeout 40
       IPCConnectTimeout 10
       DefaultInitEnv RAILS_ENV production
       SocketPath /tmp/fcgidsock
   
   

6. Start Apache
   

   
   /usr/local/apache2/bin/apachectl start

7. Go to http://www.example.com and see the Rails welcome page.
8. Set up a database for Rails in database.yml (or see HowToUseRailsWithoutADatabase).
9. Create a simple controller for testing Rails
   

   
   cd /var/www/rails/testapp/public
   rm index.html
   cd ..
   script/generate controller home index

10. Go to www.example.com/home/index and see a default view, running with normal cgi.
11. Enable FastCGI?
    1. Edit /var/www/rails/testapp/public/.htaccess and change dispatch.*cgi* to dispatch.*fcgi*
    2. Edit /var/www/rails/testapp/public/dispatch.fcgi (in rails 0.13.1 this is within the rails installation: lib/fcgi_handler.rb) and change
       

       require 'fcgi'

       
       to
       

       require 'rubygems'
       require_gem 'fcgi'

12. Go to www.example.com/home/index and see a default view again, but with fcgi

Troubleshooting Suggestions
Make sure that you delete any ruby session files in your /tmp directory before switching to dispatch.fcgi. If you tested with cgi, there might be some with different permission that what apache (fastcgi) can read and will cause issue.

If you want to see if fastcgi is working with ruby, try pasting the following into test.fcgi (in your rails/public dir). You will need to make sure the file has 755 permissions (chmod 755 test.fcgi).

#!/usr/local/bin/ruby
require 'cgi'
require 'rubygems'
require_gem 'fcgi'

 FCGI.each_cgi do |cgi|
    content = ''
    env = []
    cgi.env_table.each do |k,v|
      env << [k,v]
    end
    env.sort!
    env.each do |k,v|
      content << %Q(#{k} => #{v}
\n)
    end
    cgi.out{content}
 end

---

Permissions
Make sure that (when using Apache) your www or apache user has write access to your rails/tmp and rails/log directory.

If not you will get many 500 errors!

---

The above test was working but I didn´t get the dispatcher running under apache2 (self built) until i changed the dependencies of rails-0.14.1/lib/fcgi_handler.rb to:

require 'cgi'
require 'rubygems'
require_gem 'fcgi'
require 'logger'
require 'dispatcher'
require 'rbconfig'

class RailsFCGIHandler
...

I don´t know why this is like this (why the dependencies in the dispatcher should be wrong) but it helped.

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I’ve been bitten by two things with the Apache configuration: I had MultiViews on, and I was redirecting /some/url.html to /some/url because I don’t want file extensions in my URLs. The second rule causes endless redirect looping with standard Rails’ .htaccess, and MultiViews interferes badly with Rails’ caching. So, keep MultiViews off, and be careful with those redirects. —Matijs van Zuijlen

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I have yet to get Apache fcgi working Windows XP SP2. I’ve got Apache working with Rails but it’s slow as mud. I’ve downloaded all the software that I can find and put in the http.conf file the recommended Apache configuration but can’t tell if fcgi is working or not.

Does anyone have a simple step by step recipe to get Apache (v2) on Windows XP Prof running fcgi? I found a test page for Rails but it doesn’t render the link