# Capistrano: command never finishes?

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/capistrano-command-never-finishes/54511>\
**Category:** Rails\
**Created:** [March 7, 2006, 1:20pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/capistrano-command-never-finishes/54511 "2006-03-07T13:20:21Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 6\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![jeroen](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/bbe5ce/32.png) [@jeroen](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/jeroen)\
**Post date:** [March 7, 2006, 1:20pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/capistrano-command-never-finishes/54511/1 "2006-03-07T13:20:21Z")

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Hi,

I have created a small :restart task to overwrite the default one:

task :restart, :roles =\> :app do  
sudo “/etc/init.d/lighttpd stop”  
sudo “/etc/init.d/lighttpd start”  
end

This works fine and lighty does restart, but the last command never  
finishes, so I never return to the prompt. Here’s my output:

cap restart  
loading configuration  
/usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/capistrano-1.1.0/lib/capistrano/recipes/standard.rb  
loading configuration ./config/deploy.rb

- executing task restart
- executing “sudo /etc/init.d/lighttpd stop”  
servers: [“ror1.tienhuis.nl”]  
[ror1.tienhuis.nl] executing command  
\*\* [out :: ror1.tienhuis.nl] Stopping web server: lighttpd  
\*\* [out :: ror1.tienhuis.nl] .  
command finished
- executing “sudo /etc/init.d/lighttpd start”  
servers: [“ror1.tienhuis.nl”]  
[ror1.tienhuis.nl] executing command  
\*\* [out :: ror1.tienhuis.nl] Starting web server: lighttpd  
\*\* [out :: ror1.tienhuis.nl] .

---- nothing happens for a long time so I press ctr-c … ------

/usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/capistrano-1.1.0/lib/capistrano/command.rb:39:in  
`sleep': Interrupt from /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/capistrano-1.1.0/lib/capistrano/command.rb:39:in`process!’  
from  
/usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/capistrano-1.1.0/lib/capistrano/command.rb:26:in  
`loop' from /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/capistrano-1.1.0/lib/capistrano/command.rb:26:in`process!’  
from  
/usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/capistrano-1.1.0/lib/capistrano/actor.rb:176:in  
`run' from /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/capistrano-1.1.0/lib/capistrano/actor.rb:173:in`execute\_on\_servers’  
from  
/usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/capistrano-1.1.0/lib/capistrano/actor.rb:173:in  
`run' from /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/capistrano-1.1.0/lib/capistrano/actor.rb:221:in`sudo’  
from ./config/deploy.rb:64:in `instance_eval' ... 9 levels... from /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/capistrano-1.1.0/lib/capistrano/cli.rb:12:in`execute!’  
from /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/capistrano-1.1.0/bin/cap:11  
from /usr/bin/cap:18:in `load’  
from /usr/bin/cap:18

Any ideas? Doing this on the command line on my remote server works  
instantly.

Jeroen

BTW: I’ve successfully migrated to capistrano by following the steps  
mentioned on the RoR blog entry. Easy! I can see this tool becoming  
quite handy over time.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![jeroen](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/bbe5ce/32.png) [@jeroen](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/jeroen)\
**Post date:** [March 7, 2006, 3:19pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/capistrano-command-never-finishes/54511/2 "2006-03-07T15:19:30Z")

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Jeroen,

For some reason I have never been able to determine, lighttpd does  
not like to be restarted via capistrano. ☹ Sometimes it hangs (as  
you’re observing) and other times it appears to finish successfully,  
but lighttpd never gets restarted.

I’ve never observed this behavior with any other application–just  
lighttpd. Many other people have observed this as well. I wish I knew  
of a workaround you could try, but this has really stumped me for a  
long time.

You might want to look into using external fastcgi processes, instead  
of lighttpd-spawned ones, so that you can restart the fcgi’s without  
having to restart lighttpd. Other than that, I’m not sure what to you  
tell you. ☹

Good luck,

Jamis

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![jeroen](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/bbe5ce/32.png) [@jeroen](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/jeroen)\
**Post date:** [March 7, 2006, 3:34pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/capistrano-command-never-finishes/54511/3 "2006-03-07T15:34:40Z")

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I’m still on ST, but all of my Rails apps are served by lighttpd spawned  
fastcgi  
processes. And on every one of them ./script/process/reaper is all I  
ever need  
to do, to reload my apps code. In fact, the only ST change I needed to  
make was  
setting it to just “run” not “sudo”. The rest just flat worked.

-Brian

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![jeroen](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/bbe5ce/32.png) [@jeroen](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/jeroen)\
**Post date:** [March 7, 2006, 4:36pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/capistrano-command-never-finishes/54511/4 "2006-03-07T16:36:26Z")

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Jamis B. wrote:

> You might want to look into using external fastcgi processes, instead of  
> lighttpd-spawned ones, so that you can restart the fcgi’s without having  
> to restart lighttpd. Other than that, I’m not sure what to you tell you. ☹

Thanks Jamis! Is there a quick way to see what exactly cap is doing? If  
it means anything, I’m running ruby 1.8.4 rails 1.0 and lighty 1.4.8

I indeed would like to use externally spawned processes (reaper/spinner)  
but I need to think about how to do this because my setup is a bit  
awkward and I initially wasn’t going to bore you with that… Please  
feel free to ignore this question as it’s kind of OT 😉

I’m trying to run several apps using one installation. I have the app  
installed in /w/tennis

Then I have individual club sites

/sites/club1  
/sites/club2  
/sites/club3

All these are plain symlinks to /w/tennis - except the CSS and some  
images directories which should remain unique per site.

lighty.conf has this for each site (= vhost):  
“bin-path” =\> “/sites/”+var.appname+"/public/dispatch.fcgi",

But capistrano wants to restart a different process:

- executing “sudo /w/tennis/current/script/process/reaper”  
servers: [“ror1.tienhuis.nl”]  
[ror1.tienhuis.nl] executing command  
\*\* [out :: ror1.tienhuis.nl] Couldn’t find any process matching:  
/w/tennis/current/public/dispatch.fcgi  
command finished

I could use this in lighty.conf and reference the only real  
dispatch.fcgi:

“bin-path” =\> “/w/tennis/public/dispatch.fcgi”

But then the environment gets screwed because Rails loads the wrong  
paths.

So basically I’m a bit lost as two how to deploy multiple sites using  
one “base installation”. If anybody has any good pointers, please let me  
know!

Jeroen

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![jeroen](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/bbe5ce/32.png) [@jeroen](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/jeroen)\
**Post date:** [March 7, 2006, 9:48pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/capistrano-command-never-finishes/54511/5 "2006-03-07T21:48:07Z")

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On Mar 7, 2006, at 8:34 AM, Jeroen H. wrote:

> > You might want to look into using external fastcgi processes,  
> > is a bit awkward and I initially wasn’t going to bore you with  
> > /sites/club3  
> > servers: [“ror1.tienhuis.nl”]  
> > But then the environment gets screwed because Rails loads the wrong  
> > paths.
> 
> So basically I’m a bit lost as two how to deploy multiple sites  
> using one “base installation”. If anybody has any good pointers,  
> please let me know!

The problem here is that the reaper doesn’t know what the name of  
your dispatcher is. It tries to grep the process list to find a  
matching one, and the default selection criteria are failing.

If you know some unique string for finding the dispatcher processes  
in the list of running processes, you can write your own restart task:

task :restart, :only =\> :app do  
sudo "kill `ps wwax | grep 'some unique stuff' | grep -v grep | cut -b 1-5`"  
end

That’s more or less what the reaper does.

- Jamis

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![jeroen](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/bbe5ce/32.png) [@jeroen](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/jeroen)\
**Post date:** [March 8, 2006, 10:55am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/capistrano-command-never-finishes/54511/6 "2006-03-08T10:55:59Z")

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Jamis B. wrote:

> task :restart, :only =\> :app do  
> sudo "kill `ps wwax | grep 'some unique stuff' | grep -v grep | cut -b 1-5`"  
> end
> 
> That’s more or less what the reaper does.

Thanks Jamis.

I first used your clever “kill-grep” command which worked, but then I  
looked closely at the reaper script and indeed saw it already has built  
in support for finding other processes than the standard  
public/dispatch.fcgi in the app directory. I now use this:

task :restart, :roles =\> :app do  
send(run\_method, “#{current\_path}/script/process/reaper -d mystring”)  
end

Where “mystring” identifies part of the path to dispatch.fcgi  
This works great, it finds all relevant processes and restarts them.

Thanks a lot!

Jeroen