I am working on a rails application and added a simple login system according to a book. I created the controller admin: rails generate controller admin login logout index It added the following routes to routes.db get "admin/login" get "admin/logout" get "admin/index" I can got to http://localhost:3000/admin/login there is no problem at all. But when I try to login I get: No route matches "/admin/login"! Now, the first confusing part is that the "login" method of my AdminController is not executed at all. The second confusing part is that this code works like a charm - redirects everything to /admin/login: def authorize unless User.find_by_id(session[:user_id]) flash[:notice] = "you need to login" redirect_to :controller => 'admin', :action => 'login' end end Sidenotes: I restarted the server several times. I tried a different browser - to be sure there is no caching problem.