what is the relationship between rails Phusion Passenger apache? - ruby-on-rails

Question

I know rails is the ruby framework and apache is the server of rails.While what is Phusion Passenger used for? Is it a server or a deploy tool?
Now I am trying to deploy my rails app on the server,while I don`t know how to use Phusion Passenger and apache to get my app running ):
thanks in advance

Answer 1

Phusion Passenger is just an apache mod that needs to be activated in the virtual host your application is using, telling apache which version of Rails is used and other configurations like this one. So basically, Apache uses Passenger to run Ruby on Rails applications.
You have to read this in order to install Passenger : https://www.phusionpassenger.com/download (just scrool down a little to read the open source version documentation).
And this in order to set it up and run it for one of your applications : http://www.modrails.com/documentation/Users%20guide%20Apache.html#_configuring_phusion_passenger So, yeah, a lot of text in here but you don't need to read everything fortunately.
Besides, when you install it, Passenger will tell you exactly what to write in your Virtual Host configuration and basically, there are only 2 lines of text. : )
Most of the time, if you have a virtual Host that looks like so :
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName www.wsgiapp.com
DocumentRoot /webapps/wsgiapp/public
<Directory /webapps/wsgiapp/public>
Allow from all
Options -MultiViews
</Directory>
</VirtualHost>
Passenger will tell you to write something like this once installed :
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName www.wsgiapp.com
DocumentRoot /webapps/wsgiapp/public
PassengerRuby /usr/bin/ruby
PassengerRoot /somewhere/passenger/x.x.x
<Directory /webapps/wsgiapp/public>
Allow from all
Options -MultiViews
</Directory>
</VirtualHost>