# Idle Apache+FastCGI sleeping? **URL:** \ **Category:** Rails\ **Created:** [January 11, 2006, 10:52pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/idle-apache-fastcgi-sleeping/52207 "2006-01-11T22:52:12Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 4\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Jason\_A.on](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/73ab20/32.png) [@Jason\_A.on](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Jason_A.on)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2006, 10:52pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/idle-apache-fastcgi-sleeping/52207/1 "2006-01-11T22:52:12Z")
Wondering: Does Apache shut down inactive FastCGI processes if it doesn’t get any requests for a while? My app works fine if it’s being used regularly, but it will respond very slowly to the first request after an hour of zero traffic. Is there a way to keep FastCGI ready all the time, even when there haven’t been any requests for a while? We’re deploying this app on a kiosk, so traffic is very low, but it needs to respond quickly at any time. System: - Windows XP (I know…) - Apache 2.0.55 + FastCGI - Ruby 1.8.2 - RubyForApache-1.3.1 - Rails 1.0 > From httpd.conf: \ ServerName rails DocumentRoot “approot/rails/public” \ Options ExecCGI FollowSymLinks AllowOverride all Allow from localhost 127.0.0.1 Order allow,deny AddHandler fastcgi-script .fcgi FastCgiConfig -initial-env RAILS\_ENV=production -maxProcesses=1 Am I missing anything? – Jason A.on [http://www.thenewjhp.com](http://www.thenewjhp.com) ---
**Author:** ![Jason\_A.on](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/73ab20/32.png) [@Jason\_A.on](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Jason_A.on)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2006, 8:33am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/idle-apache-fastcgi-sleeping/52207/2 "2006-01-12T08:33:23Z")
Am Mittwoch, den 11.01.2006, 13:49 -0800 schrieb Jason A.on: > System: > ServerName rails > FastCgiConfig -initial-env RAILS\_ENV=production -maxProcesses=1 > > Am I missing anything? Hi, try to start the FCGI process at Apache startup. Replace your FastCgiConfig line with the following: FastCgiServer /var/www/myrailsapp/public/dispatch.fcgi -initial-env RAILS\_ENV=production -processes 1 -idle-timeout 60 I am not sure what will happen on Windows, but if you don’t start the process together with Apache, the first request initializes this procedure and maybe i forget about the process after some idle time. I have no experience about that. Maybe this is not much help. ## Ciao, Norman Norman T. [http://blog.inlet-media.de](http://blog.inlet-media.de) ---
**Author:** ![Jason\_A.on](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/73ab20/32.png) [@Jason\_A.on](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Jason_A.on)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2006, 3:44pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/idle-apache-fastcgi-sleeping/52207/3 "2006-01-12T15:44:56Z")
Jason A.on wrote: > Wondering: Does Apache shut down inactive FastCGI processes if it > doesn’t get any requests for a while? My app works fine if it’s being > used regularly, but it will respond very slowly to the first request > after an hour of zero traffic. Interestingly, I’m experiencing exactly the same thing using FastCgiExternalServer. The fcgi processes are kicked off by spawn-fcgi and look quite happy sitting there. Apache2.0 is _always_ slow to acess the the first time after a lack of activity. As soon as that first hit is over, it’s nice and fast, but when I head back to developing locally for an hour or so, and then deploy again into production (god bless you switchtower) I get the pause. I’m guessing in my case it’s because even though the process is still alive, the bulk of the app is not loaded until that first request post-deploy… Not sure if this can help shed any light 🙂 A. ---
**Author:** ![Jason\_A.on](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/73ab20/32.png) [@Jason\_A.on](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Jason_A.on)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2006, 7:05pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/idle-apache-fastcgi-sleeping/52207/4 "2006-01-12T19:05:19Z")
On Jan 12, 2006, at 6:44 AM, Alan wrote: > and look quite happy sitting there. Apache2.0 is _always_ slow to > > A. ``` I have seen this behavior before. It seems to me that when the ``` fcgi’s sit idle for too long the get pages out of memory. Then when you hit the site after its been idle, the fcgi’s have to page back into memory so hence the lag. The kludge that I use works great but I’d be interested if there was another way. But this technique works great in production for me. ``` Just add a cron job that uses curl or wget to grab a page thats not ``` cached(so it goes through rails) and send the output to /dev/null. If you have the corn job do this once every 5 minutes your fcgi’s will always be ‘awake’ . And one hit every 5 minutes is virtually no extra load on the server. But by doing things this way, your site will always be snappy no matter how long it has been since a user visited the site. Cheers- -Ezra Z. Yakima Herald-Republic WebMaster [http://yakimaherald.com](http://yakimaherald.com) 509-577-7732 removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid