Comments on: Dreamhost Rails FCGI Woes

By: Tim Connor

Tim Connor — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 17:40:12 +0000

Thanks, this helps a lot.

I emailed DH and they confirmed this exact thing, for me (check my page for the short details).

By: Sean

Sean — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 05:22:08 +0000

James/John, Would you mind sharing any resources you know of for using Capistrano to deploy multiple rails sites on a single DH account?

Thanks,
Sean

By: John Nunemaker

John Nunemaker — Fri, 23 Feb 2007 04:29:33 +0000

Thanks to these two articles, my apps have been purring like kittens with mild traffic. Check them out and try them in addition to the tip I mentioned above. Also, be sure to use capistrano for deployment.

By: Georg Ledermann

Georg Ledermann — Thu, 22 Feb 2007 20:01:21 +0000

I was very disappointed with the performance of DreamHost. It was too slow, even if only one user (me) was only and only one rails application was installed.

I switched to hostingrails.com and now my rails application is running like a champ. In addition, hostingrails.com supports not only FCGI, but Mongrel as webserver. And pricing is nearly the same like DreamHost.

By: RSL

RSL — Wed, 20 Dec 2006 21:15:51 +0000

I can’t believe no one’s come across this information before. Awesome. As a DH customer myself I did notice that the shell account that runs a couple of Rails apps ran a lot slower than the one where I was just testing out new code. I proudly thought that it was my much improved coding skills [which I'm still gonna chalk it up to] but now I know there may be other circumstances. Great post!

By: John Nunemaker

John Nunemaker — Fri, 08 Dec 2006 21:21:26 +0000

@James – Excellent tip. I noticed this happening but hadn’t actually processed what was happening. Makes sense now.

By: James Higginbotham

James Higginbotham — Fri, 08 Dec 2006 21:18:36 +0000

Another tip from a fellow Dreamhost + Rails customer: separate user names are essential when you need to push out new versions of an app. I use Capistrano to deploy and part of its process is to reap old FCGI processes so that the changes take effect. If you run multiple applications as a single user, all of those applications will be impacted, causing them all to have to spin up again.

I found this out when I deployed to a staging site with the same username, only to find out that my production FCGI processes were getting reaped as well. I quickly moved my staging server to a separate username and I can now deploy to staging as often as I want without disrupting the production version.

By: John Nunemaker

John Nunemaker — Fri, 08 Dec 2006 01:07:54 +0000

Yes, one username per domain. I wouldn’t run more than 3 or 4 low traffic rails apps on one username. It doesn’t matter if it’s domain or subdomain, what matters is the number of apps per user. I typically create a new user, password and host for each database.

There are some other keys to keeping them running nice such as capistrano for deployment but the main thing I have run into is the memory cap for an individual user.

As far as what it takes to move a site to the new user, you just have to switch it in the dreamhost control panel and then redeploy the files. If you are using capistrano, this only takes a few setting changes. I can switch a capistrano deployed app in about five minutes once all the dreamhost settings update.

If you change users, be sure to change your svn username to the same as the new unix username. In my experience cap on dreamhost runs smoother with svn and unix usernames and passwords that are the same (makes for less configuration).

By: William H. Harle Jr.

William H. Harle Jr. — Thu, 07 Dec 2006 23:51:51 +0000

I’m hoping this is why my dreamhost ror programs are running so strangely. So is the key making different usernames for each domain/subdomain or for each database? And do you have to do anything past changing the username to change the application over and get it running smoothly? Thanks John!

By: John Nunemaker

John Nunemaker — Thu, 07 Dec 2006 21:24:16 +0000

I don't actually know what the limit is and support didn't tell me unfortunately. The issue with media temple's grid servers is that you can't host very many rails apps unless you bump up your rails container. A 1GB container is an additional $70/month on top of the normal grid price which means you are probably better off getting a VPS or something dedicated. If you are in it for Rails and you need something pretty reliable, your best bet is probably a VPS from slicehost or something.

By: Clint Pidlubny

Clint Pidlubny — Thu, 07 Dec 2006 17:47:40 +0000

That is really good to know John. Excellent tip. I’ve been considering a move to Media Temple. http://www.mediatemple.net/webhosting/gs/details.htm

What is the memory limit on FCGI processes anyway?