title: Rails 3, displaying jpg images from the local file system above RAILS_ROOT
body: <p>I'm trying to figure out a way to display images from a mounted file system that is not under RAILS_ROOT (in RedHat or Ubuntu environments).  I don't want to use a symbolic link because this app is actually deployed through Tomcat, and Tomcat tries to follow the symbolic link and delete all the images in the mount when I shut down Tomcat.  Putting the images under public/images is also not an option due to the number and size of these files.</p>
  
  <p>I looked into send_file, but that will just display the  one image.  I need to display 6 requested images in a nicely formatted page.  I would prefer not to use Base64 encoding because of the bloat, but I don't know how else to pass the image data down with the rendered page.</p>
  
  <p>Again, the issue is that the images cannot be accessed via url in the generated HTML, the image data must be passed down with the rest of the page.  I know that creating some type of service to server up the images would be the best way to handle this, but right now I just need to get this working.</p>
  
  <p>Any help greatly appreciated!</p>