My Apache Setup

I've been using Apache2 with mod_fcgid for quite a while because it's good enough. I use it primarily because it's really simple to administer and I'm hosting internal business applications with very little load on them. Here's my setup...

Installation is really straight forward

$> sudo apt-get install apache2 libapache2-mod-fcgid
$> a2enmod fcgid

default config

# serve everything from /var/www/ and use /var/www/default as the document root

ServerAdmin webmaster@hostname

# setup logs
ErrorLog /var/log/apache2/error.log
CustomLog /var/log/apache2/access.log combined
LogLevel warn\

# limit the amount of info about server
ServerSignature Off

# default permissions to all files
<Directory />
  Options FollowSymLinks
  AllowOverride None
</Directory>p;

# setup document root and permissions
DocumentRoot /var/www/default
<Directory /var/www/default>
  Options +FollowSymLinks +MultiViews
  AllowOverride None
  Order allow,deny
  allow from all
</Directory>

# define environment for fcgid processes
DefaultInitEnv PATH "/opt/ruby/bin"
DefaultInitEnv RAILS_ENV "production"

per application config

# run the app from /var/www/appname and serve it aliased as http://hostname/appname

Alias /appname "/var/www/appname/current/public"
<Directory /var/www/appname/current/public/>

  Options -Indexes +MultiViews +FollowSymLinks +ExecCGI
  AllowOverride None
  Order deny,allow
  Allow from all

  RewriteEngine On

  # provide support for cap deploy:web:disable
  RewriteCond /var/www/appname/current/public/system/maintenance.html -f
  RewriteCond %{SCRIPT_FILENAME} !maintenance.html
  RewriteRule ^.*$ /appname/system/maintenance.html [L]

  # standard rails rewrite with support for alias directory
  RewriteBase /appname
  RewriteRule ^$ index.html [QSA]
  RewriteRule ^([^.]+)$ $1.html [QSA]
  RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
  RewriteRule ^(.*)$ dispatch.fcgi [QSA,L]

  # define error documents
  ErrorDocument 500 500.html
</Directory>