Monitor fcgi?

Rails
1

Im trying to get a new app up on dreamhost. What fun :confused:

Id like to try out the ‘frao_handler’ which just keeps dreamhost from
automatically killing my fcgi processes. But Im also worried about
things getting out of hand. I seem to remember that captures in views
can cause problems with fcgi (I might just be making that up???), and I
do have few in my app. And well Im just not real fit with this stuff
yet despite lots of reading and googling.

I read a lot of things talking about zombie fcgi processes. Well how
does one monitor something like that? Is there a command I can run to
monitor fcgi?

I hope someone can help.

thanks,
john

2

john wrote:

Well how
does one monitor something like that? Is there a command I can run to
monitor fcgi?

You can use my fcgi_watch command. I wrote it especially to monitor fcgi
processes on Dreamhost:-)

http://www.alevans.com/dl/fcgi_watch-0.3.1.tgz

–Al Evans

3

Wow thanks Al,

I just read through the readme real quick. Sounds fantastic. I admit
that I didn’t really understand everything exactly but I just need to
try it out I guess.

Thanks again!!!

Al Evans wrote:

john wrote:

Well how
does one monitor something like that? Is there a command I can run to
monitor fcgi?

You can use my fcgi_watch command. I wrote it especially to monitor fcgi
processes on Dreamhost:-)

http://www.alevans.com/dl/fcgi_watch-0.3.1.tgz

–Al Evans

4

hehe,
hey Al, can I ask you some questions about fcgi_watch? I tried it out
on my local (osx) machine and I get “-bash: script/fcgi_watch:
Permission denied” when I try to run it. I’ll just put it up on
dreamhost though I guess and try it there because that’s the kind of
cowboy I am. But I have other questions (all super noob stuff).

  1. So I should use the “frao_handler” in my dispatch.fcgi file to keep
    dreamhost fcgi killers out of there and then put your fcgi_watch in my
    scripts directory?

  2. Is that it? I realize that I can get a list of processes if I run
    fcgi_watch manually and that I can restart my app with ‘restart’ and it
    will just kill processes related to that app. But do I need to activate
    it or anything to take over for the rails reaper.

Sorry if Ive totally missed the point. Any extra help would be great if
you get a moment.

Thanks again,
john

Al Evans wrote:

john wrote:

Well how
does one monitor something like that? Is there a command I can run to
monitor fcgi?

You can use my fcgi_watch command. I wrote it especially to monitor fcgi
processes on Dreamhost:-)

http://www.alevans.com/dl/fcgi_watch-0.3.1.tgz

–Al Evans

5

john wrote:

hehe,
hey Al, can I ask you some questions about fcgi_watch? I tried it out
on my local (osx) machine and I get “-bash: script/fcgi_watch:
Permission denied” when I try to run it.

Hmm – my guess would be that for some reason, it doesn’t have
executable permissions. chmod 755 script/fcgi_watch should make it work.

I’ll just put it up on
dreamhost though I guess and try it there because that’s the kind of
cowboy I am.

The same thing might be required there.

  1. So I should use the “frao_handler” in my dispatch.fcgi file to keep
    dreamhost fcgi killers out of there and then put your fcgi_watch in my
    scripts directory?

I don’t use the ‘frao_handler’. When I first started with DH, it seemed
to make things worse, rather than better. My impression was that it
did restart the FCGI dispatchers, but they were never actually used
again. Other people seem to have gotten different results. My advice
would be to try it, and see if you have to kill -9 large numbers of
dispatchers on a regular basis. If not, you’re cool

I do, however, run a pinger script on my local machine. It just submits
a request to some controller in each of my DH Rails apps every ten
minutes. This seems to keep them responsive, without making them spawn
bunches of FCGI dispatchers. If it’s unsuccessful, it shows me the error
it got. The past couple of weeks, this has been depressing:-)

  1. Is that it? I realize that I can get a list of processes if I run
    fcgi_watch manually and that I can restart my app with ‘restart’ and it
    will just kill processes related to that app. But do I need to activate
    it or anything to take over for the rails reaper.

No, you just use it instead of the reaper. The reaper doesn’t do
anything unless it’s called, manually or from a script. If you have
scripts that call it, you might want to substitute calls to fcgi_watch
instead.

–Al Evans

6

Al Evans wrote:

No, you just use it instead of the reaper. The reaper doesn’t do
anything unless it’s called, manually or from a script. If you have
scripts that call it, you might want to substitute calls to fcgi_watch
instead.

–Al Evans

I get it. Great! I had never used the reaper before. So this is
exactly what I was looking for when I first posted. Fantastic.

Man… From my logs it seems like my site is responding better on my
laptop running webbrick than it is on dreamhost! And of course I don’t
get these errors all the time locally either. nuts.

Anyway thanks for all your help,
john