## APACHE RESOURCES (static files):
!/*.gif=myapp
!/*.html=myapp

## DISALLOW  (security-related filter):
!/*.jsp=myapp
!/*.xml=myapp

## TOMCAT RESOURCES:
/*.do=myapp

However if you dynamically generate your sitemap.xml or any other XML files using a servlet then this security will be a problem since the XML request will not make it to Tomcat/JBoss.  This is when mod_rewrite comes to the rescue.

You can set up mod_rewrite to rewrite the sitemap.xml request to be a sitemap.do request.

RewriteRule ^/sitemap\.xml$ /sitemap.do [PT,L]

Then you can set up Struts to forward this request to sitemap.xml.

<action path="/sitemap" forward="/sitemap.xml"/>

Related posts:

1. Installing Apache 2.2 with mod_rewrite and mod_proxy_balancer
2. Browser Security Warnings
3. mod_rails

<!-- Restrict direct access to jsps -->
<security-constraint>
  <web-resource-collection>
    <web-resource-name>you_cant_touch_this</web-resource-name>
    <url-pattern>*.jsp</url-pattern>
  </web-resource-collection>
  <auth-constraint/>
</security-constraint>

To prevent Apache from sending JSP requests to JBoss add the following to your configuration.

## DISALLOW FROM REACHING JBOSS (security-related filter):
!/*.jsp=name_of_your_app
!/*.xml=name_of_your_app

Related posts:

1. mod_rewrite to bypass security
2. Recurring Illegal Access Errors in JBoss when running ATG
3. Trim White Space from JSP

# BEGIN Stats
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/(stats|failed_auth\.html).*$ [NC]
RewriteRule . - [L]
</IfModule>
# END Stats

This is further explained in the Dreamhost Wiki page Making stats accessible with htaccess.

Dreamhost uses Analog to generate web statistics. Other recommended AWStats which seems more powerful. Maybe I’ll switch if I feel the need.

Related posts:

1. WordPress Contact E-Mail Form
2. WordPress and Gallery2
3. Subversion on Dreamhost

$ (OS 10048)Only one usage of each socket address (protocol/network address/port) is normally permitted.  : make_sock: could not bind to address 0.0.0.0:80
no listening sockets available, shutting down
Unable to open logs

This was puzzling to me since Apache was starting fine before. Fortunately on this forum thread, Failure Message starting Apache, one of the respondents had diagnosed the problem.

I’ve had the same problem. I noticed that when I reboot my computer (running XP pro), sometimes Apache worked. Then, I change the port to 3128 and it worked. But, then I was illuminated by God, and do a netstat -ao (-o displays the PID) and discover that Skype was listening in port 80 instead of apache -that is, I have both set up to run at startup, thus, if apache started first, it will have port 80 available, and Skype not, and vice-versa-. So my solution was to remove Skype from startup -I don’t use it too often- and make apache (and myself) happy by making port 80 available.

All I had to do was stop Skype and everything was fine. Too bad TcpView was not able to tell me that Skype was using port 80.

Related posts:

1. Oracle TNS Listener service not starting
2. Installing Apache 2.2 with mod_rewrite and mod_proxy_balancer
3. Configuring Capistrano and Mongrel

Related posts:

1. Installing Apache 2.2 with mod_rewrite and mod_proxy_balancer
2. Configuring Apache to work with a Mongrel Cluster
3. Configuring Capistrano and Mongrel

Therefore it was time for me to do the install by myself. Fortunately it was not hard with the help of this article, Building Apache 2.2 plus the manual.

Here is what I did.

$ wget http://apache.mirror99.com/httpd/httpd-2.2.8.tar.gz
$ tar xvfz httpd-2.2.8.tar.gz
$ cd httpd-2.2.8
$ ./configure --enable-rewrite=shared --enable-proxy=shared \
    --enable-proxy_balancer=shared --enable-proxy_http=shared
$ make
$ sudo make install
$ sudo /usr/local/apache2/bin/apachectl start

Related posts:

1. Configuring Apache to work with a Mongrel Cluster
2. Installing Ruby on Rails on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4
3. mod_rewrite to bypass security

For this article I used the chapter Setting Up A Development Environment in Agile Web Development with Rails, version 2.0, plus this article.

• Time For A Grown-Up Server: Rails, Mongrel, Apache, Capistrano and You

Capistrano working together with Mongrel allows you to deploy and restart Mongrel clusters quite nicely.

Configure Apache proxy balancer

Apache has a mod_proxy_balancer module which must be enabled. Once this is done you can add the following to the end of conf/httpd.conf or if you are on Red Hat Linux you can put the proxy balancing section in /etc/httpd/conf.d/myapp.proxy_cluster.conf and the virtual host section in /etc/httpd/conf.d/myapp.conf.

<Proxy balancer://mongrel_cluster>
  BalancerMember http://127.0.0.1:8000
  BalancerMember http://127.0.0.1:8001
  BalancerMember http://127.0.0.1:8002
</Proxy>

<VirtualHost *:80>
  Include conf/myapp.common (or Include conf.d/myapp.common)
  ErrorLog logs/myapp_errors_log
  CustomLog logs/myapp_log combined
</VirtualHost>

Configure Apache Virtual Host

Next you configure the virtual host that represents the Ruby on Rails application in the custom file conf/myapp.common or if you are on Red Hat Linux in /etc/httpd/conf.d/myapp.common.

ServerName myapp.com
DocumentRoot /usr/local/rails/myapp/current/public

<Directory "/usr/local/rails/myapp/current/public">
  Options FollowSymLinks
  AllowOverride None
  Order allow,deny
  Allow from all
</Directory>

RewriteEngine On

# Uncomment for rewrite debugging
#RewriteLog logs/myapp_rewrite_log
#RewriteLogLevel 9 

# Check for maintenance file and redirect all requests
RewriteCond %{DOCUMENT_ROOT}/system/maintenance.html -f
RewriteCond %{SCRIPT_FILENAME} !maintenance.html
RewriteRule ^.*$ /system/maintenance.html [L]

# Rewrite index to check for static
RewriteRule ^/$ /index.html [QSA] 

# Rewrite to check for Rails cached page
RewriteRule ^([^.]+)$ $1.html [QSA]

# Redirect all non-static requests to cluster
RewriteCond %{DOCUMENT_ROOT}/%{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteRule ^/(.*)$ balancer://mongrel_cluster%{REQUEST_URI} [P,QSA,L]

Restart Apache

$ sudo /usr/local/apache2/bin/httpd -k restart

or

$ sudo /etc/init.d/httpd restart

Related posts:

1. Installing Apache 2.2 with mod_rewrite and mod_proxy_balancer
2. Configuring Capistrano and Mongrel
3. Monit and Mongrel