# RE: Production deployment on Dreamhost? **URL:** \ **Category:** Rails\ **Created:** [January 12, 2006, 10:07pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/re-production-deployment-on-dreamhost/95098 "2006-01-12T22:07:04Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![HoganS\_Brian\_P](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/h/9de0a6/32.png) [@HoganS\_Brian\_P](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/HoganS_Brian_P)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2006, 10:07pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/re-production-deployment-on-dreamhost/95098/1 "2006-01-12T22:07:04Z")
Yup just figured that out… Do you think that this would solve the issue where my app sometimes takes 30-40 seconds to “start up” after it’s not been used for awhile? I’d hate for a client website to have to wait that long to serve up a search page or something. ---
**Author:** ![HoganS\_Brian\_P](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/h/9de0a6/32.png) [@HoganS\_Brian\_P](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/HoganS_Brian_P)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2006, 10:10pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/re-production-deployment-on-dreamhost/95098/2 "2006-01-12T22:10:08Z")
I face the same think when using rails on dreamhost with fcgi. The app needs to startup sometimes (and this takes a lot of cpu time)… ---
**Author:** ![HoganS\_Brian\_P](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/h/9de0a6/32.png) [@HoganS\_Brian\_P](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/HoganS_Brian_P)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2006, 1:42am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/re-production-deployment-on-dreamhost/95098/3 "2006-01-13T01:42:08Z")
Abdur-Rahman A. wrote: > I face the same think when using rails on dreamhost with fcgi. The app > needs to startup sometimes (and this takes a lot of cpu time)… I’m not sure about deployment on Dreamhost, but if I remember correctly I think there are maintenance things that you can do on your app to keep it running up to speed. I’m still noobish with Rails, but I think I read something about clearing your logs and files like that to keep Rails apps running faster. Might be an aside to the question, but I remembered it and thought it might be of note for other new Railers. Anyone have any more details/specifics on what I am talking about? ---
**Author:** ![HoganS\_Brian\_P](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/h/9de0a6/32.png) [@HoganS\_Brian\_P](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/HoganS_Brian_P)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2006, 3:24am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/re-production-deployment-on-dreamhost/95098/4 "2006-01-13T03:24:57Z")
On Jan 12, 2006, at 3:05 PM, Hogan, Brian P. wrote: > Yup just figured that out… > > Do you think that this would solve the issue where my app sometimes > takes 30-40 seconds to “start up” after it’s not been used for awhile? > I’d hate for a client website to have to wait that long to serve up a > search page or something. This has come up several times on the list recently. The problem seems to be that the fcgi processes get paged out of memory after a while, causing a delay when they get swapped back in. A workaround would be to set up a cron job that uses wget to hit your site every few minutes. This’ll keep the process in memory so it’ll be more responsive. I haven’t had this problem myself, so I’m just parroting what I’ve heard elsewhere. YMMV. -dudley ---
**Author:** ![HoganS\_Brian\_P](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/h/9de0a6/32.png) [@HoganS\_Brian\_P](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/HoganS_Brian_P)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2006, 5:46am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/re-production-deployment-on-dreamhost/95098/5 "2006-01-13T05:46:30Z")
Dudley F. wrote: > This has come up several times on the list recently. The problem seems > to be that the fcgi processes get paged out of memory after a while, > causing a delay when they get swapped back in. A workaround would be to > set up a cron job that uses wget to hit your site every few minutes. > This’ll keep the process in memory so it’ll be more responsive. I haven’t > had this problem myself, so I’m just parroting what I’ve heard elsewhere. > YMMV. There was a thread “Idle Apache+FastCGI sleeping?” in which Ezra Zygmuntowicz gave this advice: I have seen this behavior before. It seems to me that when the fcgi’s sit idle for too long they get paged 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 cron 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. ---
**Author:** ![HoganS\_Brian\_P](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/h/9de0a6/32.png) [@HoganS\_Brian\_P](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/HoganS_Brian_P)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2006, 5:49am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/re-production-deployment-on-dreamhost/95098/6 "2006-01-13T05:49:31Z")
I think Ezra should have a cron job to send out that email every 10 days… it seems to be a common problem. ---
**Author:** ![HoganS\_Brian\_P](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/h/9de0a6/32.png) [@HoganS\_Brian\_P](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/HoganS_Brian_P)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2006, 6:56pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/re-production-deployment-on-dreamhost/95098/7 "2006-01-13T18:56:35Z")
On Jan 12, 2006, at 8:49 PM, Tom F. wrote: > I think Ezra should have a cron job to send out that email every 10 > days… > it seems to be a common problem. Great Idea! lol -Ezra > > elsewhere. > > great in production for me. > > Rails mailing list > > removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid > > [http://lists.rubyonrails.org/mailman/listinfo/rails](http://lists.rubyonrails.org/mailman/listinfo/rails) > > * * * > > Rails mailing list > removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid > [http://lists.rubyonrails.org/mailman/listinfo/rails](http://lists.rubyonrails.org/mailman/listinfo/rails) -Ezra Z. Yakima Herald-Republic WebMaster [http://yakimaherald.com](http://yakimaherald.com) 509-577-7732 removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid ---
**Author:** ![HoganS\_Brian\_P](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/h/9de0a6/32.png) [@HoganS\_Brian\_P](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/HoganS_Brian_P)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2006, 3:07am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/re-production-deployment-on-dreamhost/95098/8 "2006-01-17T03:07:34Z")
Good info here guys. I just deployed on Dreamhost as well, and everything ain’t so “dreamy”. Hopefully these fixes will speed things up. Are you guys freezing edge or anything on there? I noticed on my box at least they were running an older version of rails. 0.14.3 I believe.