On Fri, 2006-12-22 at 00:06 -0800, Zed A. Shaw wrote: > > To be clear, send_file does not read the whole file into memory -- it blows > > chunks into the output stream. Mongrel and pure-Ruby FastCGI use StringIO to > > buffer the response before sending it to the client. > > > > X-Sendfile is definitely the way to go in any case. > > Just to be extra clear, neither of the two main systems for hosting Rails > would need to buffer the output if Rails didn't alternate between sending > headers and body content. > > And yes, X-Sendfile is the way to go.
Thanks for all your responses. Just in case it makes a difference, I'll clarify about my setup. Basically we have an Apache on port 80 which can't be removed from the equation. The Rails app is served directly Apache -> Mongrel, and now I have made it so the /file/ path is proxied Apache -> lighttpd, which serves the files using mod_secdownload. I wasn't actually aware of X-Sendfile so that's interesting -- is this better, worse or equal to using mod_secdownload? I wouldn't have thought it made a difference as they both enable lighttpd to serve the static files, but if people think I should drop the mod_secdownload solution in favour of X-Sendfile I guess I could set up the application to go through lighttpd too. Thanks again, Jon _______________________________________________ Mongrel-users mailing list Mongrel-users@rubyforge.org http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/mongrel-users
