Mac OSX Lion Apache + RubyOnRails + mod_passenger - ruby-on-rails

Question

I'm trying to learn how to develop web application with Ruby On Rails but I've incurred in a silly error.
I'm trying to use Phusion Passenger aka mod_rails to use Apache instead of WEBrick; I've installed the module via gem and run the
sudo passenger-install-apache2-module
command to install passenger; then I edited the http.conf file adding
LoadModule passenger_module /Users/Stopped/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p327/gems/passenger-3.0.19/ext/apache2/mod_passenger.so
PassengerRoot /Users/Stopped/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p327/gems/passenger-3.0.19
PassengerRuby /Users/Stopped/.rvm/wrappers/ruby-1.9.3-p327/ruby
added the VirtualHost
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName rails.local
DocumentRoot "/Users/Stopped/RoR/prova/public"
<Directory /Users/Stopped/RoR/prova/public>
AllowOverride all
Options -MultiViews
Order allow,deny
Allow from all
</Directory>
</VirtualHost>
restarted Apache with sudo apachectl restart but It's not working :( If I lookup in localhost I see the "It works!" page but if I go at rails.local there is not my Rails app :(
Passenger is loaded
Apache/2.2.22 (Unix) Phusion_Passenger/3.0.19 DAV/2 PHP/5.4.9 Server at localhost Port 80
Any ideas?
PS: This is "apachectl -S" output
VirtualHost configuration:
wildcard NameVirtualHosts and _default_ servers:
*:80 is a NameVirtualHost
default server rails.local (/private/etc/apache2/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf:53)
port 80 namevhost rails.local (/private/etc/apache2/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf:53)
Syntax OK
SOLUTION
Uhm... I solved it, adding 127.0.0.1 rails.local to my hosts file but I can't understand why; can someone explain this to me? ._.

Answer 1

you can't use a wildcard with localhost in your hosts file. you have to explicitly specify each subdomain for localhost in your hosts file. if you're looking for an alternative, you could buy a domain name and point that domain name to 127.0.0.1 with a wildcard. you could even go a step further and have a skeleton app which points different subdomains to different applications by mapping the routes.