On Tue, Oct 31, 2006, Sam Livingston-Gray wrote:
> My (admittedly quite limited) understanding is that Apache doesn't
> serve Rails apps itself, but it can act as a reverse proxy (see also:
> pound), dispatching requests to, e.g., dispatch.fcgi or mongrel.  I
> believe Dreamhost does this with Apache fronting for FCGI.

Not exactly correct.  FCGI is just a way to do regular CGI with a
persistent interpreter, there's no proxying involved.  Apache, via
mod_fastcgi or mod_fcgid, supports FastCGI, so it can natively serve
fcgi applications (like Rails).

> As I recall, Textdrive has you set up a lighttpd instance on some
> dedicated port, and then uses Apache's proxying capabilities to
> forward HTTP requests on 80 to your lighttpd port, and then lighttpd
> asks one or more dispatch.fcgi instances to process that request.
> Seems excessively layered to me, but I'm sure there's a reason,
> probably so you can run PHP alongside, or do virtual hosting with
> Apache, or something...

The idea here is that you get complete access to your httpd, instead of
having to ask them to add new vhosts and the like.  It actually makes a
lot of sense.

FWIW, lighty can do PHP as well :)  Just with fcgi.

Ben
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