rails rewrite question

[MarkBuckingham]

I looked at the auto-application for ruby on rails on cpanel, and I noticed the stuff about ports & rewrite rules...

Anyway... Some companies are behind firewalls that only allow outgoing access to ports 80 & 443... So... if I use a different port, my app won't work for those guys.

So I guess what I'm wondering is what do I lose by not using the rewrite rules? I can create a rails app from the command line that seems to be visible... Am I missing something here?

[cade]

The Ruby on Rails icon in the control panel isn't quite ready for prime time. It relies on a few dependencies that aren't quite available on Bluehost's systems. The page is essentially a controller for starting and stopping Mongrel instances, but Mongrel hasn't yet been installed on all of Bluehost's servers. From what I understand, it is coming along with Rails 2 soon. You can install Mongrel if you run your own repository on your account and use the page fairly successfully. As for the rewrites to port, you need mod_proxy in cPanel's implementation (it creates .htaccess directives) for it to work properly. There has been occasional talk of mod_proxy, but I wouldn't hold your breath for implementation (there are performance and security concerns).

[MarkBuckingham]

As for the rewrites to port, you need mod_proxy in cPanel's implementation (it creates .htaccess directives) for it to work properly. There has been occasional talk of mod_proxy, but I wouldn't hold your breath for implementation (there are performance and security concerns).

That's good to know, but I guess what I'm really wondering, is this: Is there any reason why I'd have to run my rails app on a different port than 80? Apache is capable of hosting a rails app all by itself, right?

Is there some reason why www.domainname.com/appdir/index.html won't work? Do I lose fastcgi or something?

Thanks.