Paul’s Journal

Many people know about the old school mod_fastcgi, but very few know about mod_fcgid. To put it extremely briefly, if you are using Apache 2, and you should be, you should be using mod_fcgid, and not mod_fastcgi.

Here quick guide on how to configure mod_fcgid for use with Apache HTTPD 2.2.0 and Typo, a RoR blog engine:

1. Download and Prepare mod_fcgid:
   

   wget http://fastcgi.coremail.cn/mod_fcgid.1.07.tar.gz
   
   tar -xvzf mod_fcgid.1.07.tar.gz
   
   cd mod_fcgid.1.07

2. Edit the Makefile. Change the top_dir variable to the prefix of your Apache 2 install.
3. Apply this patch for mod_fcgid:
   

   wget http://constant.northnitch.com/~chip/mod_fcgid.1.07-apache2.2.0.patch
   patch -p0 < mod_fcgid.1.07-apache2.2.0.patch
   

   This patch has been submitted upstream, and should be part of the next release.

4. Run ‘make’.
5. Copy .libs/mod_fcgid.so to your Apache modules directory
6. Add the following to your httpd.conf, to load the module:
   

   LoadModule fcgid_module modules/mod_fcgid.so
   IPCCommTimeout 40
   IPCConnectTimeout 10
   

7. Configure mod_fcgid for your Rails Application:
   

   <VirtualHost *:80>
   ...
   # Insert the rest of your vhost config here.
   ServerName foo.example.com
   
   <Location /journal>
       RewriteEngine On
       # Let apache handle purely static files like images by itself.
       RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
       # Send Everything else to Typo
       RewriteRule ^(.*)$ dispatch.fcgi [QSA,L]
   </Location>
   
   <Directory /sites/foo.example.com/public_html/journal>
       # ExecCGI is required for mod_fcgid to work.
       Options Indexes FollowSymLinks ExecCGI
       # Disable .htaccess files.
       AllowOverride None
       Order allow,deny
       Allow from all
       # This tells mod_fcgid to run the dispatch.fcgi script as a FastCGI
       AddHandler fcgid-script .fcgi
   </Directory>
   ....
   </VirtualHost>
   

8. Thats it.

This whole process can be easier, since mod_fcgid is also in many packaging systems, including FreeBSD’s Ports, and Gentoo Portage.