Mono FastCGI and Apache

ACM has been using Apache with mod_mono for a while (my fault) and while it works relatively well, there are some issues. Namely, every once in a while the mono server will crash and requires manual restarting. So when I heard that Mono now had FastCGI support, I was intrigued, hoping that it might alleviate these problems.

I couldn't find any instructions on setting it up with Apache (using mod_fcgid), so I figured it out on my own. Here's how I configured it to run my development copy of Neztu on Debian lenny:

# apt-get install mono-fastcgi-server2
# mkdir /tmp/mono-fastcgi
# chown www-data.www-data /tmp/mono-fastcgi
# echo DefaultInitEnv MONO_SHARED_DIR /tmp/mono-fastcgi > /etc/apache2/conf.d/mono-fastcgi

I then put the following in my vhost configuration:

Alias /neztu/ /home/matt/devel/neztu/www/
<Directory "/home/matt/devel/neztu/www">
  DirectoryIndex index.aspx
  Options ExecCGI FollowSymLinks
  AddHandler fcgid-script .asax .ashx .asmx .aspx .axd .config .cs .dll .rem .soap

  FCGIWrapper "/usr/bin/fastcgi-mono-server2 /applications=/neztu:/home/matt/devel/neztu/www" .asax
  FCGIWrapper "/usr/bin/fastcgi-mono-server2 /applications=/neztu:/home/matt/devel/neztu/www" .ashx
  FCGIWrapper "/usr/bin/fastcgi-mono-server2 /applications=/neztu:/home/matt/devel/neztu/www" .asmx
  FCGIWrapper "/usr/bin/fastcgi-mono-server2 /applications=/neztu:/home/matt/devel/neztu/www" .aspx
  FCGIWrapper "/usr/bin/fastcgi-mono-server2 /applications=/neztu:/home/matt/devel/neztu/www" .ascx
  FCGIWrapper "/usr/bin/fastcgi-mono-server2 /applications=/neztu:/home/matt/devel/neztu/www" .axd
  FCGIWrapper "/usr/bin/fastcgi-mono-server2 /applications=/neztu:/home/matt/devel/neztu/www" .config
  FCGIWrapper "/usr/bin/fastcgi-mono-server2 /applications=/neztu:/home/matt/devel/neztu/www" .cs
  FCGIWrapper "/usr/bin/fastcgi-mono-server2 /applications=/neztu:/home/matt/devel/neztu/www" .dll
  FCGIWrapper "/usr/bin/fastcgi-mono-server2 /applications=/neztu:/home/matt/devel/neztu/www" .rem
  FCGIWrapper "/usr/bin/fastcgi-mono-server2 /applications=/neztu:/home/matt/devel/neztu/www" .soap
</Directory>

And that's all there is to it. I will have to test it further to see if it is able to recover from its hiccups with this method.