I've set up a Ruby on Rails application on a Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit PC.
3 instances of Mongrel are used to run the rails program and they are load balanced by Apache 2.2.
Relevant section of my httpd.conf file is as followed:
---------- httpd.conf
#define mongrel cluster
<proxy balancer://mongrelcluster>
BalancerMember http://127.0.0.1:3001
BalancerMember http://127.0.0.1:3002
BalancerMember http://127.0.0.1:3003
</proxy>
Listen 3009
#forward requests to mongrel cluster
<virtualhost *:3009>
ProxyPass / balancer://mongrelcluster/
ProxyPassReverse / balancer://mongrelcluster/
ProxyPreserveHost on
</virtualhost>
----------- httpd.conf
I can access localhost at ports 3001, 3002 and 3003 individually without problems.
When I try to access localhost at port 3009 via Apache, I get an "Service Temporarily Unavailable The server is temporarily unable to service your request due to maintenance downtime or capacity problems. Please try again later." error message.
Upon checking the Apache error logs:
---- Error log
[Tue Oct 04 12:46:37 2011] [notice] Child 6168: Child process is running
[Tue Oct 04 12:46:38 2011] [notice] Child 6168: Acquired the start mutex.
[Tue Oct 04 12:46:38 2011] [notice] Child 6168: Starting 64 worker threads.
[Tue Oct 04 12:46:38 2011] [notice] Child 3052: Released the start mutex
[Tue Oct 04 12:46:39 2011] [notice] Child 3052: All worker threads have exited.
[Tue Oct 04 12:46:39 2011] [notice] Child 3052: Child process is exiting
[Tue Oct 04 12:46:39 2011] [notice] Child 6168: Starting thread to listen on port 80.
[Tue Oct 04 12:46:39 2011] [notice] Child 6168: Starting thread to listen on port 3009.
[Tue Oct 04 12:46:46 2011] [error] (OS 10013)An attempt was made to access a socket in a way forbidden by its access permissions. : proxy: HTTP: attempt to connect to 127.0.0.1:3001 (127.0.0.1) failed
[Tue Oct 04 12:46:46 2011] [error] ap_proxy_connect_backend disabling worker for (127.0.0.1)
[Tue Oct 04 12:46:46 2011] [error] (OS 10013)An attempt was made to access a socket in a way forbidden by its access permissions. : proxy: HTTP: attempt to connect to 127.0.0.1:3002 (127.0.0.1) failed
[Tue Oct 04 12:46:46 2011] [error] ap_proxy_connect_backend disabling worker for (127.0.0.1)
[Tue Oct 04 12:46:46 2011] [error] (OS 10013)An attempt was made to access a socket in a way forbidden by its access permissions. : proxy: HTTP: attempt to connect to 127.0.0.1:3003 (127.0.0.1) failed
[Tue Oct 04 12:46:46 2011] [error] ap_proxy_connect_backend disabling worker for (127.0.0.1)
---- Error log
The Apache error log shows that connection to the Mongrel instances failed somehow.
It appears to me a Windows 7 issue because the same setup works fine on a Windows XP system.
All suggestions / tips / solutions are welcome.
I would suggest you to switch to Linux or Mac OS X when it comes to ruby on rails and try your hands with Nginx. It is much more reliable, stable and fast. Rails has lots of gems which are very useful. The ruby community, to be honest, just doesn't care about windows. The fact is that these gems are not updated for windows and in some rare cases not built for windows compatibility. You can try and get your hands dirty with Ubuntu(which i use on a very regular basis) and also make a jump to nginx or WEBrick which comes with ruby installation itself,as you already know it. Thus, to make the best of Ruby on Rails, getting out of windows would be a better option. Read This