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Mongrel randomly dies

I've gotten the "Service temporarily unavailable" error a few times so far. I've fixed it quickly by (re)starting mongrel, but why is this happening? I looked in the mongrel log and didn't see anything relevant. This is what I have in my crontab (with my info blanked out), it's exactly what the tutorial says to have:

#clear out pid file if it didn't get erased
@reboot cd /home/__________/schedule/log && rm mongrel.pid -f

#start up your Mongrel server
@reboot cd /home/_________/schedule && /usr/local/bin/mongrel_rails start -e production -p 4___ -d
Sometimes the problem happens after a reboot, and sometimes it seems to happen randomly. Anyone know what's going on? It's not hard to fix but I shouldn't have to be monitoring my site continuously in case it dies. This also seems to happen to the other rails app I'm maintaining at the exact same times. They're both on the same server (different domains and accounts).

2007-04-14 02:02 PM

Are you running any memory-heavy plugins like RMagick?  I've seen Mongrel die when large uploaded image files get RMagicked before being saved.....but I'd imagine Mongrel might cut out if other such memory leak...er hogging plugins get employed for too long.

2007-04-14 04:28 PM

I'm not using any plugins at all. My app used to be fairly memory intensive, but I optimized it so the most demanding requests never get above 40mb, and it idles around 35-38mb.

2007-04-14 05:55 PM

Hmmm - strange.  The next time this happens please contact support and we'll take a look.  We can help you figure out safeguards to ensure your mongrels always remain up.  

2007-04-15 02:46 AM


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