Paul’s Journal

So, the Ruby on Rails people are getting excited about Apache HTTPD getting native FastCGI support.

To prove that mod_proxy_fcgi isn’t vaporware, I present a live/running demo.

And here is how its configured:

ProxyPass /fcgi-test fcgi-tcp://127.0.0.1:9500/

And here is the source code:

import cgi
import types

def myapp(environ, start_response):
start_response(’200 OK’, [('Content-Type', 'text/html')])
out = “”
# Print all environment variables
out = out+”<h3>mod_proxy_fcgi test page</h3>”
out = out+”<dl>”
env_keys = environ.keys()
env_keys.sort()
for e in env_keys:
if (type(environ[e]) == types.StringType):
out = out+”<dt>”+cgi.escape(e+’='+’”‘+environ[e]+’”‘) + “</dt>”
out = out+”</dl>”
return out

if __name__ == ‘__main__’:
from flup.server.fcgi import WSGIServer
# from flup.server.ajp import WSGIServer
WSGIServer(myapp, bindAddress=(”127.0.0.1″,9500)).run()

Most of the credit really should go to Garrett. He has been writing most of the actual code. I have just been watching the Firefly DVDs and inserting sneer comments about how XYZ patch doesn’t work with XYZ library.

Finally, A shout out to the Flup library for python. It supports AJP, FastCGI and SCGI, making it much easier to move applications between all the available connector protocols.

Update: Okay, like any new code there are bugs. The test page isn’t working right now….. Oh well.

Bloglines performance after the data center move has been GOOD:

Via Grabperf.

Mark has posted parts 1, 2, and 3, explaining how the data center move was done.

It was a good Christmas present to finish the move.

Update: Mark has posted part 4, talking about the DNS and proxy magic that made it work.