http://www.washington.edu/webinfo/case/zope/
It turns out that most of it is unnecessary if you've already followed the instructions for setting up the mod_proxy_balancer as found here. The missing key to get Pubcookie working was the mod_fba module that is linked in the case above. Here is what I did to get everything working (after following Coda Hale's process above):
1. Add mod_fba to your Apache setup:
% wget http://rici.ricilake.net/src/mod_fba.c
% apxs -c mod_fba.c
% apxs -i mod_fba.la
2. Edit httpd.conf to load that module:
LoadModule fba_module modules/mod_fba.so
3. Add the configuration for FakeBasicAuth to your myapp.common file:
FakeBasicAuthEnable on
FakeBasicAuthType authtype
4. Since I want the entire app protected by Pubcookie authentication, add the AuthType directive to the myapp.proxy_cluster.conf file to require a login for everything sent to the mongrel cluster:
<Proxy balancer://mongrel_cluster>
BalancerMember http://127.0.0.1:8000
BalancerMember http://127.0.0.1:8001
AuthType authtype
require valid-user
PubcookieAppID "myapp"
</Proxy>
5. Now, you'll be able to get access to the HTTP_AUTHORIZATION server variable in your ruby code. This will be in the form of "Basic" followed by the user's login information encoded in Base64. This line of ruby will extract out the username only for you to use in your app for authentication purposes:
userid = request.env['HTTP_AUTHORIZATION'].split(' ')[1].unpack("m").to_s.split(':')[0]
