I started off looking at using Apache with mod_fastcgi, which for the life of me, I couldn’t get the module to compile at all. I tried numerous PKGBUILDs from other archers but none seem to compile.

I then looked to Apache with mod_fcgid which is supposed to be better for Apache2 installations over mod_fastcgi. I had a little more success with this but overall it didn’t work. I successfully created my own Arch package for this which seemed to install OK, I just never seemed to get it ‘talking’ to rails properly

I then started to read some stuff about Mongrel which looked interesting. No FCGI but with speed I actually was reminded about Mongrel while reading Amy Hoy’s article ‘Because let’s face it, WEBrick sucks‘ which showed my how easy it would be to use Mongrel. Thanks Amy

So, getting Mongrel working was fine, but I wanted to proxy the requests through apache so that I had only one webserver talking to the outside world. I found Hank Matter’s article ‘Successful settings for Apache forwarding to Mongrel‘ set me off in the right direction but actually discovered this was overly complex for my setup. It was actually alot easier than this to setup.

Hank seems to be setting it up so that a folder off your site proxys back to Mongrel and serves your rails content. If though, like me, you are using virtual hosts, the setup is simplified further.
It is just a case of adding this in your virtual host config -

Redirect / http://vhost.example.com/
ProxyPass / http://localhost:3000/
ProxyPassReverse / http://localhost:3000/

That’s it, Apache is now proxying back to Mongrel