DefV-rack_lighttpd_fix

= Rack::LighttpdFix

== Why?

On some of the Openminds shared hosting servers we run a Lighttpd+FCGI stack for Ruby/Rails applications. This week we got a complaint from a user saying they had a problem with the latest Radiant 0.8. Every page he loaded was the same as the first page he opened since the last server restart.

When digging into the problem it was clear that it was a problem with Rack::Cache, which only created 1 meta-store entry and served that from there on. On investigation Rack::Cache::Key.call(@request) always returned http://example.com:80/dispatch.fcgi?. Apparently the last part of the key gets created by scriptname and pathinfo:

..snip.. parts << @request.script_name parts << @request.path_info ..snip..

When looking at the request it seems Lighttpd+FCGI doesn't fill in the env['PATH_INFO�], which results in always having the same cache key, thus the same page.

To solve this problem I've created this small Rack middleware gem that sets PATH_INFO from REQUEST_URI (Like Passenger does with Nginx)

== Installation

You can just install this as a gem: gem install -s http://gems.github.com defv-rack_lighttpd_fix

== Configuration for Rails

in production.rb

require 'rack/lighttpd_fix'

config.middleware.insert_before ::Rack::Cache, ::Rack::LighttpdFix

or for Radiant

config.middleware.insert_before ::Radiant::Cache, ::Rack::LighttpdFix