setting up multiple redmine instance with apache/passenger - ruby-on-rails

Question

I'm working on setting up a pair of redmine instances on a single server under apache.
The first worked fine and I have a virtualhost set up for it with the following vhost config:
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName tickets.domain.com
DocumentRoot /var/www/redmine
RailsEnv production
RailsBaseURI /
PassengerResolveSymlinksInDocumentRoot on
</VirtualHost>
The second I needed to setup as a subdirectory off of the main default site:
Alias /ops/ "/var/www/ops/"
<Directory "/var/www/ops/">
RailsEnv ops
RailsBaseURI /ops
PassengerResolveSymlinksInDocumentRoot on
</Directory>
So server/ops is the url for the second instance.
The trouble I'm having is that when I restart apache, whichever url you hit first seems to "win" and it breaks the other instance of the site. If I hit the /ops url then it loads just fine, but going to tickets. will cause me to get permission denied errors because all of the urls have /ops in them (for the JS and other files)
If I restart apache and hit the tickets. site first, it loads just fine but then I get 404 errors from Redmine on the /ops url.
This is on Ubuntu with a redmine PPA and both /var/www/ops and /var/www/redmine are symlinks to the shared redmine source code with their own environments defined (production and ops).
Any hints on how I can make these two live side by side successfully?
Thanks

Answer 1

this is my apache configuration hosting multiple redmine instances (domain.tld/dev1, domain.tld/dev2, ...).
You also have to change :key and :session_path in config/initializers/session_store.rb of each redmine setup.
<IfModule mod_ssl.c>
<VirtualHost _default_:443>
Servername domain.tld
ServerAdmin webmaster#domain.tld
DefaultInitEnv RAILS_ENV production
DefaultInitEnv GEM_PATH /var/lib/gems/1.8
DocumentRoot /var/www/default-ssl
<Directory /var/www/default-ssl>
AuthType Basic
AuthName "secure section"
AuthUserFile /etc/apache2/htpasswd
Require valid-user
Options +FollowSymLinks +ExecCGI
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^$ index.html [QSA]
RewriteRule ^([^.]+)$ $1.html [QSA]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ dispatch.fcgi [QSA,L]
ErrorDocument 500 "Application error Rails application failed to start properly"
AllowOverride None
Order allow,deny
allow from all
</Directory>
LogLevel warn
ErrorLog /ssl_error.log
CustomLog /ssl_access.log combined
ServerSignature Off
SSLEngine on
SSLCertificateFile /etc/ssl/certs/domain.tld.crt
SSLCertificateKeyFile /etc/ssl/private/domain.tld.key
SSLCACertificateFile /etc/ssl/certs/domain.tld.ca
<FilesMatch "\.(cgi|shtml|phtml|php)$">
SSLOptions +StdEnvVars
</FilesMatch>
BrowserMatch "MSIE [2-6]" nokeepalive ssl-unclean-shutdown downgrade-1.0 force-response-1.0
BrowserMatch "MSIE [17-9]" ssl-unclean-shutdown
Alias /dev1 /var/www/default-ssl/dev1/public
<Directory /var/www/default-ssl/dev1/public>
PassengerAppRoot /var/www/default-ssl/dev1
RailsBaseURI /dev1
Require user user1 user2
</Directory>
Alias /dev2 /var/www/default-ssl/dev2/public
<Directory /var/www/default-ssl/dev2/public>
PassengerAppRoot /var/www/default-ssl/dev2
RailsBaseURI /dev2
Require user user1
</Directory>
...
</VirtualHost>
</IfModule>

Answer 2

passenger distingues configs based on paths. Please take a look into the Ubuntu bug database:
Multiple instance of redmine does not work with passenger
create directories for every config:
/var/lib/redmine/*configname*
create symlink from redmine dir:
ln -s /usr/share/redmine /var/lib/redmine/*configname*/passenger
in your apache virtual host you can add alternative PassengerAppRoot:
PassengerAppRoot /var/lib/redmine/*configname*/passenger