FastCGI config for standalone mode

[Will Hawes-2]

I've set up a Catalyst app with Apache2 and FastCGI using the config described under "Standalone server mode" at http://search.cpan.org/~jrockway/Catalyst-Manual-5.701002/lib/Catalyst/Manual/Cookbook.pod#Standalone_server_mode. Everything works fine when the FastCGI server is running via the helper script and I can use the app without problems.

The docs state that when the backend FastCGI server is down, Apache will return a 502 error. The suggestion is to use an ErrorDocument directive to display a "down for maintenance" page when this is the case. However, Apache is actually returning a 500 error, not a 502. Apache's error log contains only the following:

[Thu Aug 30 23:26:19 2007] [error] [client 127.0.0.1] (111)Connection refused: FastCGI: failed to connect to server "/tmp/myapp.fcgi": connect() failed
[Thu Aug 30 23:26:19 2007] [error] [client 127.0.0.1] FastCGI: incomplete headers (0 bytes) received from server "/tmp/myapp.fcgi"

I have copied everything verbatim from the docs so assuming they are correct, I'd have expected this to work. I must have missed something.

Does anyone have this setup working successfully? Why would I be getting a 500 error as opposed to a 502 here?

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[Matt S Trout-2]

On Thu, Aug 30, 2007 at 11:42:51PM +0100, Will Hawes wrote:

> I've set up a Catalyst app with Apache2 and FastCGI using the config
> described under "Standalone server mode" at
> http://search.cpan.org/~jrockway/Catalyst-Manual-5.701002/lib/Catalyst/Manual/Cookbook.pod#Standalone_server_mode.
> Everything works fine when the FastCGI server is running via the helper
> script and I can use the app without problems.
>
> The docs state that when the backend FastCGI server is down, Apache will
> return a 502 error. The suggestion is to use an ErrorDocument directive to
> display a "down for maintenance" page when this is the case. However, Apache
> is actually returning a 500 error, not a 502. Apache's error log contains
> only the following:

This may be a stupid suggestion.

But wouldn't it be more useful to just trap 500s for a general "sorry" page
and have a static page httpd.conf you can use during maint?

It's not like your fcgi server should ever really be down except when
you're fucking with the backend DB or whatever

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[Will Hawes-2]

On 04/09/07, Matt S Trout <dbix-class@...> wrote:

> On Thu, Aug 30, 2007 at 11:42:51PM +0100, Will Hawes wrote:
> > I've set up a Catalyst app with Apache2 and FastCGI using the config
> > described under "Standalone server mode" at
> > http://search.cpan.org/~jrockway/Catalyst-Manual-5.701002/lib/Catalyst/Manual/Cookbook.pod#Standalone_server_mode.
> > Everything works fine when the FastCGI server is running via the helper
> > script and I can use the app without problems.
> >
> > The docs state that when the backend FastCGI server is down, Apache will
> > return a 502 error. The suggestion is to use an ErrorDocument directive to
> > display a "down for maintenance" page when this is the case. However, Apache
> > is actually returning a 500 error, not a 502. Apache's error log contains
> > only the following:
>
> This may be a stupid suggestion.
>
> But wouldn't it be more useful to just trap 500s for a general "sorry" page
> and have a static page httpd.conf you can use during maint?
>
> It's not like your fcgi server should ever really be down except when
> you're fucking with the backend DB or whatever

That's a perfectly good suggestion IMO. The question was really only
down to curiosity and the discrepancy between what the Catalyst docs
say and what I'm seeing in practice, not any specific desire to catch
502 errors. Just wondered whether I'm missing a trick as usual, or
whether the docs need altering.

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