# Weird freeze problem

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/weird-freeze-problem/119565>\
**Category:** Mongrel\
**Created:** [November 8, 2007, 12:24am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/weird-freeze-problem/119565 "2007-11-08T00:24:52Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Paul-Kenji\_Cahier](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/p/4bbf92/32.png) [@Paul-Kenji\_Cahier](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Paul-Kenji_Cahier)\
**Post date:** [November 8, 2007, 12:24am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/weird-freeze-problem/119565/1 "2007-11-08T00:24:52Z")

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Hello,

I am running mongrel 1.1 in production mode behind a lighttpd with  
mod\_proxy.  
At first everything works fine, however, after a few days, the mongrel  
servers stop answering at all, even if I try to connect to them  
directly.  
I have checked logs but there is no sign of anything at all, and even  
when there was not a single request for a few days, it did freeze, and  
that on repeated occasions. What should I do to be able to find out what  
is the problem, or to solve it?

Thanks,

–  
Best regards,  
Paul-Kenji Cahier [mailto:removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid)

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**Author:** ![Paul-Kenji\_Cahier](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/p/4bbf92/32.png) [@Paul-Kenji\_Cahier](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Paul-Kenji_Cahier)\
**Post date:** [November 8, 2007, 12:35am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/weird-freeze-problem/119565/2 "2007-11-08T00:35:23Z")

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Hey Paul,

This sounds like the problem I’ve been hitting. The folks on this  
group suggested updating the ActiveRecord timeout.

Apparently if one of your mongrels doesn’t get any play for some  
amount of time, it automatically drops the database connection. This  
in turn will cause your mongrel to become unresponsive.

Here’s the change I made in environment.rb:

# Set the verification timeout so that the mongrel connection won’t

die if left alone (1 week)  
ActiveRecord::Base.verification\_timeout = 604800

So far so good, but I’ll know more as Iet it run for the next few  
days. Hopefully there aren’t any issues with setting a timeout this  
large. Shout back to the group if this fixes it for you.

Thanks,  
Pete

PS. Prior to finding this fix, I’ve been using monit to restart the  
servers when they become unresponsive.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Paul-Kenji\_Cahier](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/p/4bbf92/32.png) [@Paul-Kenji\_Cahier](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Paul-Kenji_Cahier)\
**Post date:** [November 8, 2007, 1:46pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/weird-freeze-problem/119565/3 "2007-11-08T13:46:10Z")

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Shouldn’t the ActiveRecord database adapter recover from a lost  
connection  
and reconnect? I had a quick look at the source and the adapter has  
error  
messages for lost connections and code to reconnect, but it doesn’t seem  
to  
be used anywhere in the adapter. (I only had a quick look in  
mysql\_adapter.rb so it may be used somewhere else.)

I’m not familiar enough with the code to try and fix it and don’t have  
the  
time right now. Perhaps someone who is running into the issue can spare  
some  
time to fix it and pass the fix back to the ActiveRecord developers?

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Paul-Kenji\_Cahier](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/p/4bbf92/32.png) [@Paul-Kenji\_Cahier](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Paul-Kenji_Cahier)\
**Post date:** [November 8, 2007, 1:51pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/weird-freeze-problem/119565/4 "2007-11-08T13:51:26Z")

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On Nov 8, 2007 9:45 AM, Geoffrey C. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid)  
wrote:

> Shouldn’t the ActiveRecord database adapter recover from a lost connection  
> and reconnect? I had a quick look at the source and the adapter has error  
> messages for lost connections and code to reconnect, but it doesn’t seem to  
> be used anywhere in the adapter. (I only had a quick look in  
> mysql\_adapter.rb so it may be used somewhere else.)
> 
> I’m not familiar enough with the code to try and fix it and don’t have the  
> time right now. Perhaps someone who is running into the issue can spare some  
> time to fix it and pass the fix back to the ActiveRecord developers?

This issue arise from time to time on every list where ActiveRecord is  
a topic 😛  
(Named mongrel, merb, ruby-talk).

Ezra’s suggestions posted a few days back on merb ml is handy:

Thread.new { loop { ActiveRecord::Base.verify\_active\_connections!;  
sleep 60\*60} }.priority = -10

I’m not fond by the big sleep, since I experienced bad results using  
them. An alternative will be 1800.times { sleep 2 }

YMMV,

## – Luis L. Multimedia systems

Leaders are made, they are not born. They are made by hard effort,  
which is the price which all of us must pay to achieve any goal that  
is worthwhile.  
Vince Lombardi