Hi,
I’ve written a RoR application that I would like to be able to deploy more widely, but I’m running into a rather peculiar problem with it.
First, some context. Here’s what I’ve got installed:
actionmailer (1.3.3) actionpack (1.13.3) actionwebservice (1.2.3) activerecord (1.15.3) activesupport (1.4.2) fcgi (0.8.7) mime-types (1.15) rails (1.2.3) rake (0.7.3) sources (0.0.1) sqlite3-ruby (1.2.1) unicode (0.1) ruby 1.8.4 (2005-12-24) [i386-freebsd6]
In my application, I’m generating a home page for my own use, that has on it some useful links plus schedule info and news. So, while there are other pages
in the app, mostly, my browser is sitting on one particular page all the time. Because the page content changes over time, I have this statement in the HEAD section of the .rhtml
<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="600">
causing the page to be reloaded every 10 minutes. I have this same page up on a number of machines in my office, so each of them refreshes every 10 minutes, at staggered times.
I only have one plugin installed: acts_as_authenticated (most recent comment in
the CHANGELOG is 1 Aug 2006. Freshly downloaded). This page requires a username and password to access, and aaa is how I do that. Once logged in, the page can be accessed as much as you like without reauthentication.
This arrangement works fine for days at a time, but every once in a while, the whole thing spazzes out with this error:
TypeError (incompatible marshal file format (can’t be read)
format version 4.8 required; 47.117 given):
/usr/local/lib/ruby/1.8/pstore.rb:353:in load' /usr/local/lib/ruby/1.8/pstore.rb:353:in load’
/usr/local/lib/ruby/1.8/pstore.rb:306:in transaction' /usr/local/lib/ruby/1.8/cgi/session/pstore.rb:90:in update’
/usr/local/lib/ruby/1.8/cgi/session/pstore.rb:97:in close' /usr/local/lib/ruby/1.8/cgi/session.rb:330:in close’
/usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/actionpack-1.13.3/lib/action_controller/base.rb:1184:in `close_session’
/usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/actionpack-1.13.3/lib/action_controller/base.rb:1228:in process_cleanup_without_flash' /usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/actionpack-1.13.3/lib/action_controller/flash.rb:146:in process_cleanup_without_filters’
/usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/actionpack-1.13.3/lib/action_controller/filters.rb:662:in process_cleanup_without_session_management_support' /usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/actionpack-1.13.3/lib/action_controller/session_management.rb:124:in process_cleanup_without_components’
/usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/actionpack-1.13.3/lib/action_controller/components.rb:178:in process_cleanup' /usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/actionpack-1.13.3/lib/action_controller/base.rb:435:in process_without_filters’
/usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/actionpack-1.13.3/lib/action_controller/filters.rb:624:in process_without_session_management_support' /usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/actionpack-1.13.3/lib/action_controller/session_management.rb:114:in process’
/usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/actionpack-1.13.3/lib/action_controller/base.rb:330:in process' /usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/rails-1.2.3/lib/dispatcher.rb:41:in dispatch’
/usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/rails-
1.2.3/lib/fcgi_handler.rb:168:in process_request' /usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/rails-1.2.3/lib/fcgi_handler.rb:143:in process_each_request!’
/usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/rails-1.2.3/lib/fcgi_handler.rb:109:in `with_signal_handler’
/usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/rails-1.2.3/lib/fcgi_handler.rb:142:in process_each_request!' /usr/local/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/fcgi.rb:612:in each_cgi’
/usr/local/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/fcgi.rb:609:in `each_cgi’
/usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/rails-1.2.3/lib/fcgi_handler.rb:141:in process_each_request!' /usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/rails-1.2.3/lib/fcgi_handler.rb:55:in process!’
/usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/rails-
1.2.3/lib/fcgi_handler.rb:25:in `process!’
/home/homepage/public/dispatch.fcgi:24
Once it spazzes, the server (lighttpd, running with fastCGI from a shell as “script/server” while I’m developing) is useless and must be restarted. The
pages that were active when this happens get only garbage. Refreshing them gets more garbage. Killing and restarting the server fixes everything, for the moment.
By lowering the time in the META directive, I can make it happen faster, but
never consistently. It still takes the better part of a day to occur. There are no database writes happening here, so it should not be a contention issue there.
The only thing that I can think of is that I am logged in as the same user on
each machine, and somehow RoR is trying to update the same session file for each different session, and two or more sessions are colliding in this, trashing the file. However, the fact that killing and restarting the server
works (and doesn’t require relogin, just refresh), suggests that the session files are not trashed, so the problem is likely elsewhere.
Any thoughts? All constructive help is greatly appreciated!
–Tom
