[Catalyst] Anyone using the FastCGI External server in production?

[Bill Moseley]

One thing about using mod_fastcgi is when you start or hup the server
the application has to be compiled for each process.  Makes the load
average shoot up.  -init-start-delay helps, but then you are waiting
on processes to start up.

Using External mode (running script/app_fastcgi.pl in server mode) is
fast to start up because the application forks, and has the benefit of
being able to run as a separate user than Apache.  But, then there's
an extra server to keep running.  Also means it can be on a separate
machine.

Anyone using External mode with an application?  Do you use a
watchdog script to make sure the application keeps running, and to
restart if it dies?

Do you start with an init.d script or @reboot crontab entry?

I thought there was talk once of an improved perl process manager for
external server mode.  Anyone working on that?


-- 
Bill Moseley
moseley at hank.org