What's going on with support center ?

[lgs]

Does any body know what's happening to HostMonster Support Center ?
I've got two open Tickets since a week and no answer. My 4 domains are
off and I'm not able to recover ... :-(

seems to be an .htaccess problem, but I cannot figure out what's happened,
I just get back the content of dispatch.fcgi ( Rails installation ) ...

Please Help

[shadmego]

I can't speak to what is going on with the support center, but I can advise you not to put in any more tickets. It will only server to further slow down the response times.

I would let those tickets go until they get answered. If you have a ticket number, you might also try to contact Live Chat with that information and ask about a status update.

You can also go to http://serverstatus.hostmonster.com and see if there are any known issues with HM servers. Enter your primary domain name in the provided space to see your specific host server.

You might also try to get some help here in the user forum.

When you say your domain are off, what do you mean? What errors are you getting when you try to visit the domains in your browser? Have you tried to log into your CPanel? If so, what was the result? If you can't log into your CPanel by going through your domain, try to go to www.hostmonster.com (http://www.hostmonster.com) and in the upper right, enter your primary account domain name (domain.com) and the CPanel password. From there, you can find links to your domain manager and CPanel. Try to go to CPanel from there. What happens?

I do know there are a few members that seem to be very strong with Rails so you might want to elicit their help as well.

~regards, and welcome to the Community!

[lgs]

First of all, thank you hadmego for your intrest. I've been using CPanel
for a year to manage the main domain + 2 parked ( associated ) domains
and one addon domain. It still works fine and I also use ssh shell for install
and play with my application tests. Everything seems to work as usual. If
I run ruby dispatch.fcgi from my ~/rails/my_rails_app/public I can get the right
page but when you go through the browser, you only get the content of
dispatch.fcgi ... and I mean the script content :

#!/usr/bin/ruby
#
# You may specify the path to the FastCGI crash log (a log of unhandled
# exceptions which forced the FastCGI instance to exit, great for debugging)
# and the number of requests to process before running garbage collection.
#
# By default, the FastCGI crash log is RAILS_ROOT/log/fastcgi.crash.log
# and the GC period is nil (turned off). A reasonable number of requests
# could range from 10-100 depending on the memory footprint of your app.
#
# Example:
# # Default log path, normal GC behavior.
# RailsFCGIHandler.process!
#
# # Default log path, 50 requests between GC.
# RailsFCGIHandler.process! nil, 50
#
# # Custom log path, normal GC behavior.
# RailsFCGIHandler.process! '/var/log/myapp_fcgi_crash.log'
#
require File.dirname(__FILE__) + "/../config/environment"
require 'fcgi_handler'

RailsFCGIHandler.process!
__________________________________________________ ______________________

... that's way I thought about .htaccess misconfig. Try yourself by linking:
http://webistrano.useraxis.org/
What I did different ? Now I really can't remember, I just was palying with
something I never took care before : "Manage Ruby on Rails Applications"
inside CPanel, than it's 5-7 days I try and retray, config change, reinstall from
scratch, restore from backup ..., so I cant really say where I am, actually.

The last time it worked I just got webistrano subdomain up and running ( http://webistrano.useraxis.org/ ).
Now the situation is :

useraxis@useraxis.org [~]# ls -l ~/public_html/
total 2
drwxr-xr-x 3 useraxis useraxis 160 Feb 5 15:52 ./
drwx--x--- 30 useraxis nobody 2464 Feb 4 14:51 ../
-rw-r--r-- 1 useraxis useraxis 0 Feb 4 15:17 .htaccess
lrwxrwxrwx 1 useraxis useraxis 33 Feb 4 14:52 2-0-2 -> /home/useraxis/rails/2-0-2/public/
drwxr-xr-x 2 useraxis useraxis 48 Feb 4 15:17 cgi-bin/
lrwxrwxrwx 1 useraxis useraxis 42 Feb 5 15:50 webistrano -> /home/useraxis/rails/webistrano-1.2/public/

useraxis@useraxis.org [~/public_html]# cat ~/public_html/webistrano/.htaccess
# General Apache options
AddHandler fastcgi-script .fcgi
AddHandler cgi-script .cgi
Options +FollowSymLinks +ExecCGI

# If you don't want Rails to look in certain directories,
# use the following rewrite rules so that Apache won't rewrite certain requests
#
# Example:
# RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/notrails.*
# RewriteRule .* - [L]

# Redirect all requests not available on the filesystem to Rails
# By default the cgi dispatcher is used which is very slow
#
# For better performance replace the dispatcher with the fastcgi one
#
# Example:
# RewriteRule ^(.*)$ dispatch.fcgi [QSA,L]
RewriteEngine On

# If your Rails application is accessed via an Alias directive,
# then you MUST also set the RewriteBase in this htaccess file.
#
# Example:
# Alias /myrailsapp /path/to/myrailsapp/public
# RewriteBase /myrailsapp

RewriteRule ^$ index.html [QSA]
RewriteRule ^([^.]+)$ $1.html [QSA]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
# RewriteRule ^(.*)$ dispatch.cgi [QSA,L]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ dispatch.fcgi [QSA,L]

# In case Rails experiences terminal errors
# Instead of displaying this message you can supply a file here which will be rendered instead
#
# Example:
# ErrorDocument 500 /500.html

ErrorDocument 500 "<h2>Application error</h2>Rails application failed to start properly"
useraxis@useraxis.org [~/public_html]#

in CPanel --> Subdomains is not redirected :
useraxis@useraxis.org [~/public_html]# cat ~/public_html/.htaccess
useraxis@useraxis.org [~/public_html]#

Here the drama :-) if someone who know .htaccess better than me has a sugestion
I'll appreciate

Thank you in advance
LGS

[rvm]

Use live chat, tickets are useless.

[shadmego]

After reading up on RoR and specifically focusing on the issue you are having with your dispatch.fcgi file, I have come up with two thoughts ... neither of which I am very sure of ...

The first thought is that the file extension, .fcgi seems strange to me, again because I'm the furthest thing from a Ruby novice, so when the browser simply puts the contents of the file on the screen, I automatically assume it is an apache handler/ mime-type error where the server, or browser, is treating the .fcgi extension as a regular text file and not parsing it as it should. Again, this normally points to a mime error, but I'm not confident this is the case with you.

Another thing I've read, that you might want to check out, is the existence of apache mod_fcgid module and the Ruby (fcgi) module. I would assume since you have the dispatch.fcgi file, then you have the Ruby module. I can't stress enough how little I know about Ruby ... I'm just trying to reason this out a bit.

Most, if not all of my information came from this website:

http://www.tummy.com/Community/Articles/rails-fcgi/

Which I urge you to read. You may find yourself wanting to contact Support to ask about the environment as it pertains to the .fcgi file extensions and the mod_fcgid apache module. I ran


<?php phpinfo(); ?>

On two of my HM sites and did not find the apache module, so I don't know what the chances are of you having it as well.

I hope this at least helped to provide you with more clues as to where to look for the resolution ... I wish I were of more help ...

~regards

[lgs]

Yes shadmego,
you spot something right here. The doc you got me (http://www.tummy.com/Community/Articles/rails-fcgi/) made me think to have
a try disabling fast cgi with Rails, ... infact it works ! Now I don't know what's
different since the past configuration but NOW fcgi doesn't work any more. If I comment the line about dispatch.fcgi and put a CGI simple, in to my .htaccess,
it works again:

RewriteRule ^(.*)$ dispatch.cgi [QSA,L]
#RewriteRule ^(.*)$ dispatch.fcgi [QSA,L]

Now I have to work out why !! Is it Apache release changed recently ( I saw Apache version 2.2.6 (Unix) on my machine host42.hostmonster.com ) ?
You know, rails work very bad perfomance with cgi simple ..... I'll diving into as soon as possible, ... hoping to find some time. Untill now I'd like to thank you shadmego, for the support. Thanks to rvm too.

[lgs]

I get it, I was able to switch back to fast CGI.

... fastcgi handler in the .htaccess was changed,
as Brandon S. said by live chat few minutes ago.

Here the log of my chat session :

lgs [4:59:12 PM]:
....
.... and a question more if it is possible :
do you upgrade something Apache side recently ?
My fast cgi ( dispatch.fcgi ) doesn't work anymore ( rails installation ),
I'm just able to run my sites on CGI simple ... :-)

Brandon S. [4:58:03 PM]: the fastcgi handler in the .htaccess was changed.
[4:58:34 PM]: Previously, it was AddHandler fastcgi-script .fcgi
[4:58:44 PM]: It is now changed to: AddHandler fcgid-script .fcgi
lgs [4:59:12 PM]: Great ... I'll try
Brandon S. [4:59:17 PM]: ok

Than I changed .htaccess to :

# General Apache options
#AddHandler fastcgi-script .fcgi
AddHandler fcgid-script .fcgi
...
#RewriteRule ^(.*)$ dispatch.cgi [QSA,L]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ dispatch.fcgi [QSA,L]
...

and I got back my dispatch.fcgi processes handlers. :-)

Bye lgs