Migration seems to require ferret server to be running

For production mode, I’m using the drb server that ships with ferret,
plus a cluster of mongrels. This has been working fine for several
days. However, I recently added a new migration to my project. I shut
down the mongrel cluster and ferret server, then ran the migration (for
production mode). It failed with this error:

== AddProfileSolCount: migrating

– add_column(:profiles, :sol_vote_count, :integer, {:default=>0,
:null=>true})
-> 0.0694s
rake aborted!
druby://localhost:9010 - #<Errno::ECONNREFUSED: Connection refused -
connect(2)>

I finally figured out that if the ferret server is running, then the
migration works fine. I can reliably repeat the error by migrating down
a notch if needed (which works just fine), and then trying to migrate up
again.

Is there some way to avoid this ugly requirement? Perhaps a simple
configuration issue?

My models use the “:remote => true” parameter to act_as_ferret. My
ferret_server.yml only contains a setup for “production” mode.

Thanks for any help.
Marcel