# Where's Mongrel -- is it necessary?

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/wheres-mongrel-is-it-necessary/110150>\
**Category:** Deployment\
**Created:** [July 23, 2007, 8:36pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/wheres-mongrel-is-it-necessary/110150 "2007-07-23T20:36:22Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![rubyvista](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/r/9de0a6/32.png) [@rubyvista](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/rubyvista)\
**Post date:** [July 23, 2007, 8:36pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/wheres-mongrel-is-it-necessary/110150/1 "2007-07-23T20:36:22Z")

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I realize that this question is a bit silly, but I’m wondering – once  
Rails has been deploy to a website, how/where do you start up Mongrel?  
I’ve deployed my Rails application to a webhost, and it works fine, but  
the strange thing is: I haven’t started up Mongrel or any other server.

I can create entries in the database and log in and out of my app, but  
at no point did I ever start Mongrel. True, nobody is visiting my site  
yet, but I’m wondering if I need to start up Mongrel anywhere.

Can anyone enlighten me on this? Also, I’m on a shared hosting server,  
so please don’t ask me to bind on port 80 unless you can explain how to  
do that. 🙂

Thanks in advance to anyone out there!

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**Author:** ![rubyvista](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/r/9de0a6/32.png) [@rubyvista](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/rubyvista)\
**Post date:** [July 26, 2007, 12:45am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/wheres-mongrel-is-it-necessary/110150/2 "2007-07-26T00:45:48Z")

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On Jul 23, 2007, at 2:36 PM, Captain Clearlight wrote:

> I realize that this question is a bit silly, but I’m wondering – once  
> Rails has been deploy to a website, how/where do you start up Mongrel?

cd [your rails app dir]  
mongrel\_rails start

that said, this should probably be automated via some sort of startup  
script. you may want mongrel\_cluster, in which case you need to  
configure it.

> True, nobody is visiting my site yet, but I’m wondering if I need  
> to start up Mongrel anywhere.
> 
> Can anyone enlighten me on this? Also, I’m on a shared hosting server,  
> so please don’t ask me to bind on port 80 unless you can explain  
> how to  
> do that. 🙂

if it’s a shared site then it’s probably somewhat managed by your  
hosting provider. you’ll need to check their docs – particularly in  
regard to how the mongrel instances pick up your changes.

-faisal

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![rubyvista](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/r/9de0a6/32.png) [@rubyvista](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/rubyvista)\
**Post date:** [July 26, 2007, 12:45am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/wheres-mongrel-is-it-necessary/110150/3 "2007-07-26T00:45:58Z")

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Or, if you are on a shared host, you may even be using apache-managed  
FCGI, in which case you don’t need mongrel at all in production. Note  
that apache-managed FCGI’s don’t scale nearly as well as external  
mongrel instances, though.

- Jamis