Simply Rails 2 final deployment failure (500 Error)

[ephemeral24]

I'm at the end of Simply Rails 2 book and everything has worked so far, until I tried to deploy the shovell production app on my shared hosting service. I'm getting a 500 Internal Server Error. My host is BlueHost and they are running:

• Rails 2.2.2 (which is what I developed in)
• Apache front-end
• FastCGI back-end (no Mongrel)
• MySQL (no SQLite)

I know their configuration works because I created a test app according to their instructions (the top Google search on "How to set up Ruby on Rails Bluehost" has them). I also spent a few hours on the phone with their upper-level support. Together we tested all sorts of things short of getting into the app, and they concluded there was something wrong with my app.

I know it seems like a really broad question, but if anyone has a suggestion on what I can try to isolate the problem beyond a generic 500 error I'd welcome the help. I feel I've come so far working through all of the book problems it seems a shame that the deployment would fail.

Here's my database.yml (***** refers to private information)

development:
  adapter: mysql
  database: *****_shovelldev
  host: localhost
  username: *****_rails
  password: *****
  timeout: 5000

production:
  adapter: mysql
  database: *****_shovellprod
  host: localhost
  username: *****_rails
  password: *****
  timeout: 5000

test:
  adapter: mysql
  database: *****_shovelltest
  host: localhost
  username: *****_rails
  password: *****
  timeout: 5000

Here's my routes.rb:

ActionController::Routing::Routes.draw do |map|
  map.resources :tags
  # The priority is based upon order of creation: first created -> highest priority.
 
  # Sample of regular route:
  #   map.connect 'products/:id', :controller => 'catalog', :action => 'view'
  # Keep in mind you can assign values other than :controller and :action
 
  # Sample of named route:
  #   map.purchase 'products/:id/purchase', :controller => 'catalog', :action => 'purchase'
  # This route can be invoked with purchase_url(:id => product.id)
 
  # Sample resource route (maps HTTP verbs to controller actions automatically):
  #   map.resources :products
 
  # Sample resource route with options:
  #   map.resources :products, :member => { :short => :get, :toggle => :post }, :collection => { :sold => :get }
 
  # Sample resource route with sub-resources:
  #   map.resources :products, :has_many => [ :comments, :sales ], :has_one => :seller
 
  # Sample resource route with more complex sub-resources
  #   map.resources :products do |products|
  #     products.resources :comments
  #     products.resources :sales, :collection => { :recent => :get }
  #   end
 
  # Sample resource route within a namespace:
  #   map.namespace :admin do |admin|
  #     # Directs /admin/products/* to Admin::ProductsController (app/controllers/admin/products_controller.rb)
  #     admin.resources :products
  #   end
 
  # You can have the root of your site routed with map.root 
  map.root :controller => "stories"
 
  # See how all your routes lay out with "rake routes"
 
  # Install the default routes as the lowest priority.
  # Note: These default routes make all actions in every controller accessible via GET requests. You should
  # consider removing the them or commenting them out if you're using named routes and resources.
  map.resources :stories, :has_many => :votes, :collection => { :bin => :get }
  map.resource :session
  map.resources :users
  map.connect ':controller/:action/:id'
  map.connect ':controller/:action/:id.:format'
end

Note: I tried deploying the code from the book, but that was written with Rails 2.0.x so when I tried to do a rake task it failed because the ruby gem version didn't match that of the server.

[calkie_f]

Check the log file logs/production.log after getting the error -- this often helps me.

[maximan]

check the log file at production.log if that doesnt work try the web

[ephemeral24]

Well, I looked at the production.log and it was completely empty. Is there something I need to do to initialize the application in the production environment?

[Mittineague]

Does your config/environment.rb file have something like this in it

.....
# Uncomment below to force Rails into production mode when
# you don't control web/app server and can't set it the proper way
# ENV['RAILS_ENV'] ||= 'production'
.....

[ephemeral24]

I hadn't uncommented that, so I tried that, but it still didn't work. Thank you for the suggestion, though. If it didn't fail for some other reason, it would have failed for that one.