Howto Rails¶

lighttpd config¶

setup {
    module_load ( "mod_expire", "mod_fastcgi", "mod_vhost" );
}

# looks for cached pages (with '.html' appended to the url), but only if the file for
# the original url doesn't exists and doesn't end with '.html' (in the first case we already have a file,
# in the second case we don't want to append another '.html' - if a file exists for the url we will still find it)
#
# remove it if your rails app doesn't cache files, or modify it to look somewhere else (depending on your rails application).
# see below for the lua script.
# you can also use "lua.handler" from "mod_lua" instead of "include_lua" if you need high performance with multiple workers.
cached_html {
    if !phys.is_file {
        if phys.path !$ ".html" {
            include_lua "/etc/lighttpd-sandbox/cached_html.lua";
        }
    }
}

var.vhosts = [];

# ...

var.vhosts = var.vhosts + [
    "www.lighttpd.net": ${
        docroot "/var/www/servers/www.lighttpd.net/mephisto/public/";
        index ("index.html");
        cached_html;

        # deliver static files directly, forward everything else to the rails application
        if physical.is_file {
            header.add ("X-cleanurl", "hit");
        } else {
            header.add ("X-cleanurl", "miss");
            fastcgi "unix:/var/run/lighttpd/sockets/www.lighttpd.net.sock";
        }

        if req.path =~ "\.(png|css|gif)$" {
            expire "access 1 week";
        }
    }
];

# ...

vhost.map var.vhosts;

lua script¶

-- /etc/lighttpd-sandbox/cached_html.lua
function try_cached_html(vr)
    local p = vr.phys.path .. '.html'
    st, res = vr:stat(p)
    if st and st.is_file then
        -- found the file
        vr.phys.path = p
    elseif res == HANDLER_WAIT_FOR_EVENT then
        return HANDLER_WAIT_FOR_EVENT
    end
    -- ignore other errors
end

actions = try_cached_html

spawn rails application¶

Simple ./run script to spawn rails applications with spawn-fcgi and runit/daemontools:

#!/bin/sh

exec 2>&1

RAILS_ENV="production" \
LANG=C LC_ALL=C \
exec /usr/bin/spawn-fcgi n -s /var/run/lighttpd/sockets/www.lighttpd.net.sock -u www-default -U www-data - /var/www/servers/www.lighttpd.net/mephisto/public/dispatch.fcgi

dispatch.fcgi¶

Obviously you need a dispatch.fcgi FastCGI handler, if you don't have one, just try this one:

#!/usr/bin/env ruby

require File.dirname(__FILE__) + "/../config/environment" 
require 'fcgi_handler'

RailsFCGIHandler.process!