When developing your application, you should give write permission to you application directory (app/) as views are converted to plain PHP and locale files are updated automatically.

Once you stop modifying your code you remove write access to your web server.

If you want to use caching you should also make your cache/ folder writable.

The approach that Akelos has for bypassing this common situation in many PHP hots is to write files using an FTP/s account. Just create an FTP account for that user and it will write the files using its own uid. This will also work on the apps you code if you use the Ak::file_puts_contents method. Some people don't like this approach due FTP insecurity, but you can just use a firewall to allow access to port 21 to localhost.

Another approach is to use suexec, but then your scripts will run as cgi and that will not perform as well as mod_php.

A simpler solution is to add your user to the www group so you can modify the files it generates.

And the last one, which I haven't tried myself, is to tell Apache to setgid bit by default, so all files uploaded through apache will still have the group of the account.

I'm not sure about this, but it is possible that lighttpd is pre-forking php cgi scripts to respond requests faster.

If you could write up a guide for the process you ran through I'll happily run the unit tests under your environment to ensure that everything works OK in advance as I've never tested Akelos under Lighttpd.

It should work OK, but some .htaccess directives might need to be adapted for lighttpd.

I found this here

lighttpd doesn't support per-directory config files and it doesn't understand the Apache file format at all. Use something like url.rewrite = ( "^[^/]+" => "/player/$0.php" ) in your lighttpd config file.

So it seems quite problematic to do all that magic.

I found also these handling the subject:

• http://pixel.global-banlist.de/2007/2/6/drupal-on-lighttpd-with-clean-urls
• http://textsnippets.com/posts/show/693
• http://trac.lighttpd.net/trac/ticket/189

Now I'll go to sleep - this time for real =)

-jyrki

Nice write up!

I'll follow the tutorial and will make Akelos work with nice URLs on lighthttpd

Can you tell me which lighttpd version does the ports collection install?

lighttpd -v

I've read that lighttpd-1.4.15 and up come with mod_magnet which can handle rewrite rules in a less hackish way than older versions.

I could install lighttpd but could not make URL rewrite work.

I don't have much time for this right now as I really want to get the new documentation site ready SOON, so if you have some time to play with it, let me know if you succeed.

This is what I've got so far:

./lighttpd.conf

# Default configuration file for the lighttpd web server
# Start using ./script/server lighttpd

server.bind = "0.0.0.0"
server.port = 3000

static-file.exclude-extensions = ( ".fcgi", ".php", ".rb", "~", ".inc" )
index-file.names = ( "index.php" )

server.modules           = ( "mod_accesslog", "mod_fastcgi", "mod_compress", "mod_expire" )

server.document-root     = CWD + "/public/"

server.errorlog          = CWD + "/log/lighttpd.error.log"
accesslog.filename       = CWD + "/log/lighttpd.access.log"

$HTTP["url"] =~ "^/" {
    index-file.names = ( "index.php" )
    magnet.attract-physical-path-to = ( CWD + "/lib/AkActionController/lighttpd/akelos.lua" )
}

compress.filetype        = ( "text/plain", "text/html", "text/css", "text/javascript" )
compress.cache-dir       = CWD + "/tmp/cache"

expire.url               = ( "/favicon.ico"  => "access 3 days", 
                             "/images/"      => "access 3 days", 
                             "/stylesheets/" => "access 3 days",
                             "/javascripts/" => "access 3 days" )

mimetype.assign             = (
    ".pdf"          =>      "application/pdf",
    ".sig"          =>      "application/pgp-signature",
    ".spl"          =>      "application/futuresplash",
    ".class"        =>      "application/octet-stream",
    ".ps"           =>      "application/postscript",
    ".torrent"      =>      "application/x-bittorrent",
    ".dvi"          =>      "application/x-dvi",
    ".gz"           =>      "application/x-gzip",
    ".pac"          =>      "application/x-ns-proxy-autoconfig",
    ".swf"          =>      "application/x-shockwave-flash",
    ".tar.gz"       =>      "application/x-tgz",
    ".tgz"          =>      "application/x-tgz",
    ".tar"          =>      "application/x-tar",
    ".zip"          =>      "application/zip",
    ".mp3"          =>      "audio/mpeg",
    ".m3u"          =>      "audio/x-mpegurl",
    ".wma"          =>      "audio/x-ms-wma",
    ".wax"          =>      "audio/x-ms-wax",
    ".ogg"          =>      "application/ogg",
    ".wav"          =>      "audio/x-wav",
    ".gif"          =>      "image/gif",
    ".jpg"          =>      "image/jpeg",
    ".jpeg"         =>      "image/jpeg",
    ".png"          =>      "image/png",
    ".xbm"          =>      "image/x-xbitmap",
    ".xpm"          =>      "image/x-xpixmap",
    ".xwd"          =>      "image/x-xwindowdump",
    ".css"          =>      "text/css",
    ".html"         =>      "text/html",
    ".htm"          =>      "text/html",
    ".js"           =>      "text/javascript",
    ".asc"          =>      "text/plain",
    ".c"            =>      "text/plain",
    ".cpp"          =>      "text/plain",
    ".log"          =>      "text/plain",
    ".conf"         =>      "text/plain",
    ".text"         =>      "text/plain",
    ".txt"          =>      "text/plain",
    ".dtd"          =>      "text/xml",
    ".xml"          =>      "text/xml",
    ".mpeg"         =>      "video/mpeg",
    ".mpg"          =>      "video/mpeg",
    ".mov"          =>      "video/quicktime",
    ".qt"           =>      "video/quicktime",
    ".avi"          =>      "video/x-msvideo",
    ".asf"          =>      "video/x-ms-asf",
    ".asx"          =>      "video/x-ms-asf",
    ".wmv"          =>      "video/x-ms-wmv",
    ".bz2"          =>      "application/x-bzip",
    ".tbz"          =>      "application/x-bzip-compressed-tar",
    ".tar.bz2"      =>      "application/x-bzip-compressed-tar"
)

# Making sure file uploads above 64k always work when using IE or Safari
# For more information, see http://trac.lighttpd.net/trac/ticket/360
$HTTP["useragent"] =~ "^(.*MSIE.*)|(.*AppleWebKit.*)$" {
  server.max-keep-alive-requests = 0
}

./lib/AkActionController/lighttpd/akelos.lua

function file_exists(path)
  local attr = lighty.stat(path)
  if (attr) then
      return true
  else
      return false
  end
end
function removePrefix(str, prefix)
  return str:sub(1,#prefix+1) == prefix.."/" and str:sub(#prefix+2)
end

-- local prefix = '/akelos'
local prefix = ''

if (not file_exists(lighty.env["physical.path"])) then
    request_uri = removePrefix(lighty.env["uri.path"], prefix)
    if request_uri then
      lighty.env["uri.path"]          = prefix .. "/index.php"
      local uriquery = lighty.env["uri.query"] or ""
      lighty.env["uri.query"] = uriquery .. (uriquery ~= "" and "&" or "") .. "ak=" .. request_uri
      lighty.env["physical.rel-path"] = lighty.env["uri.path"]
      lighty.env["request.orig-uri"]  = lighty.env["request.uri"]
      lighty.env["physical.path"]     = lighty.env["physical.doc-root"] .. lighty.env["physical.rel-path"]
    end
end

When I run

lighttpd  -f lighttpd.conf

I get the error "(server.c.849) Configuration of plugins failed. Going down."

lighttpd.conf in your Application directory, besides .htaccess

./lib/AkActionController/lighttpd/akelos.lua in the Akelos directory

No, you are right.

Anyhow, the path doesn't really matter as we need to supply it manually to the lighttpd command.

Once we have it working we will need to make it work using something like

./script/server lighttpd

Which will do all the dirty guessing work for us.

BTW check out CWD + "/tmp/cache" directives as they relate to the akelos AK_BASE_DIR, which is the framework dir as it is checked out from the trunk.

The problem seems to be with mod_magnet and OS X. Mod_magnet needs Lua in order to work and installing it via MacPorts doesn't work, I read.

-jyrki

EDIT: Now it works - partially. I get error 500...

sudo port install lighttpd +cml

should be something of help

Now I do get error 403 in root and 404 when trying to access /stylesheets/, /images/ or /javascripts/ following the mod_magnet path. :/

-jyrki

Good morning!

What a wonderful morning: the Sun is behind clouds, it's raining etc. But - akelos works with ligghtpd now with the pretty URIs and everything! =)

Hopefully I updated the wiki page correctly because I've been doing so much tweeking around this subject I can't remember everything anymore... If you, bermi, would like to check it, I'd be glad. Thanks for your help!

http://wiki.akelos.org/setting-up-akelos-on-lighttpd-in-a-mac

-jyrki

I'd like to help as much as I can. My skills are still in its infancy but I will develop them (is it right word, just wondering...) How should I add the link to the Wiki home? Is there any "rules" for links there? Sidebar or such?

Questions, questions and questions ;)

-jyrki

I'll continue in this topic, because this has changed into lighttpd topic :)

Now I have a problem that every URL Akelos generates contains port specification twice, e.g. http://ijyrki.local:3000:3000/user/login. Any ideas how to solve this?

-jyrki

There's nothing else than:

function index()
{
    $this->redirectToAction('login');
}

That creates the error as does:

<h2>_{Log In}</h2>
<?php $f = $form_helper->form_for('User', $User, array('url' => array('controller' => 'user', 'action' => 'login'))); ?>

<label for="User[Username]">_{Username: }</label><?= $f->text_field('Username'); ?><br />
<label for="User[Password]">_{Password: }</label><?= $f->password_field('Password'); ?><br />
<input name="commit" type="submit" value="_{Log In}" />

</form>

-jyrki

Oh, the server is lighttpd with the same configuration find in the tutorial..

Good morning!

Workaround is to set the AK_SERVER_PORT to empty string.

define('AK_SERVER_PORT', '');

-jyrki

I should have rev 292. Do I need to create the program again after I have updated the source?

-jyrki

Ok. I updated the framework, copied the config/boot.php to my application and the problem still stays. I'll just use the workaround I introduced in my last message until there's a "real" solution.

-jyrki