Lighttpd/FastCGI dispatch.fcgi processes

Rails
1

I have the fastcgi.server part of my lighttpd.conf like this:

fastcgi.server = (
“.fcgi” => (
“test” => (
“socket” => “/tmp/test1.socket”,
“bin-path” => “/home/paulbarry/public/dispatch.fcgi”,
“min-procs” => 1,
“max_procs” => 2
)
)
)

When I start up lighttpd, there are 4 processes:

28505 root 17 0 25224 20m 1976 S 0.0 45.7 0:03.09
dispatch.fcgi
28504 root 18 0 20720 13m 1660 S 0.0 29.5 0:02.38
dispatch.fcgi
28503 root 18 0 20720 1080 856 S 0.0 2.3 0:02.55
dispatch.fcgi
28501 root 18 0 20720 996 856 S 0.0 2.2 0:02.19
dispatch.fcgi

Right after I start up lighttpd, If I try to hit my site, the browser
just
waits for about 1 minute. Once the first hit returns, then the site
seems
to work fast after that. So my questions are:

  1. Why does lighttpd take a minute to start? What is it doing?
  2. Why are there 4 dispatch.fcgi processes, if I have max_procs set to
    2?