Best practices for monitoring mongrels with monit?

Server Mongrel
1

Hello,

We’re interested in hearing from folks who have worked out a set of
“best
practices” for monitoring mongrels with monit.

My local setup is remarkably similar to the one currently found in the "
Practical Programmers Deploying Rails Apps Beta" PDF, as well as several
other examples that we’ve seen floating around on the web.

Has someone gone to the trouble to do a pro/con analysis of a couple of
different approaches, so that we can get a better idea of what folks
have
tried?

[We’d be sort of miserable if we didn’t have monit… it allows us to
build
some beautiful things!]

thanks very much in advance,

–elijah

2

Here is a good recipe for a mongrel process, as provided on some site I
found:

(I believe the forum post was by Ezra)

check process mongrel_cluster_8000
with pidfile /var/apps/twocb/shared/pids/mongrel.8000.pid
start program = “/usr/bin/mongrel_rails cluster::start -C
/var/apps/twocb/current/config/mongrel_cluster.yml --clean --only 8000”
stop program = “/usr/bin/mongrel_rails cluster::stop -C
/var/apps/twocb/current/config/mongrel_cluster.yml --clean --only 8000”
if totalmem is greater than 110.0 MB for 4 cycles then restart

eating up memory?

if cpu is greater than 50% for 2 cycles then alert

send an email to admin

if cpu is greater than 80% for 3 cycles then restart

hung process?

if loadavg(5min) greater than 10 for 8 cycles then restart

bad, bad, bad

if 20 restarts within 20 cycles then timeout

something is wrong, call the sys-admin

group mongrel_cluster

3

Does anyone have any tips for checking to see if the mongrel instance
is responding to HTTP? I just tried doing this:

if failed host 127.0.0.1 port 8001 protocol http
with timeout 10 seconds
then restart

but when I have that code in my monit script it gives me this error:
mongrel_rails_8001’ failed protocol test [HTTP] at INET[127.0.0.1:8018]
via TCP

Thanks for any tips.

Mike

4

Sorry - I was copying and pasting from an alert email. The ports
“do” match up in my monit script

Here’s a real example:

#8002
check process mongrel_rails_8002 with pidfile
/var/run/mongrel/mongrel.8002.pid
group mongrel
start program = “/usr/local/bin/ruby /usr/local/bin/mongrel_rails
start -d -e production -a 127.0.0.1 -c /opt/rails/radius --user
mongrel --group mongrel -p 8002 -P /var/run/mongrel/mongrel.8002.pid
-l /var/log/mongrel/mongrel.8002.log”
stop program = “/usr/local/bin/ruby /usr/local/bin/mongrel_rails
stop -P /var/run/mongrel/mongrel.8002.pid”
if totalmem > 100.0 MB for 5 cycles then restart
if failed host 127.0.0.1 port 8002 protocol http
with timeout 10 seconds
then restart

5

well, something doesn’t seem right:

-> mongrel_rails_8001’ failed protocol test [HTTP] at
INET[127.0.0.1:8018]
^
^^^^^^^^^^^^

127.0.0.1:8018 <- port 8018? or do you want port 8001?

also i leave the host parameter out of the monit config.

if failed port 8015 protocol http
with timeout 20 seconds
then restart

6

Well, there are a few things to think about.

  1. I’ve got a script that checks nginx with a “success” message.
  2. Are you checking if mongrel is up, or rails?
    If it’s mongrel, you might want to write a custom route so it’s not
    loading the framework stack every time.
    If it’s rails, you should create something like a MonitController that
    will respond with “success” when asked for the index action.

Doing those things has worked quite well for me so far. Just be sure
to disable the logging in the monit controller so it doesn’t fill your
logs.
def logger
end

On Wed, Mar 26, 2008 at 6:09 PM, Michael E.

7

Thanks Joey -

I have my apache setup to respond “OK” to monit to test my Apache
instances but how do I write my monit script to hit the
MonitController.index action? Is it the same config as I would use
for Apache?

Thanks
Mike

8

here’s a blog post on suppressing the logging…

“Rails logger.silence on controller action - Rails - Ruby-Forum”

here’s my bit from my monitrc

if failed port 8000 protocol http and request “/pulse”
with timeout 10 seconds
then restart

where “pulse” is defined in my routes.rb

9

Thanks guys - this works great for me.

Much appreciated.

Mike