As probably everyone knows HTTP does not suite well to work with long lasting tasks. In such cases You have to make some workarounds, to give response to browser before timeout, and let task running till successful (or not) finish. I have just such a task in my Rails application, but looks like I don’t have to write some workaround, since someone already has written solution.
It is called BackgroundDRb and written by Ezra Zygmuntowicz. I just found this and will try to use it, but judging from description on web it looks very promising. BDRb allows to run independent (from current Rails – browser conversation) tasks, check their status and do something else when waiting for task end. For example – You can make progress bar… Nice tool. Will see if I could use this plugin without hassle ;-)))
And finally “Use the source, Luke!”: http://backgroundrb.rubyforge.org/