gem Update Getting Killed

sudo gem upgrade radiant
Bulk updating Gem source index for: http://gems.rubyforge.org
Killed

Turns out the server was out of ram (!) vmstat showed 150MB free, but the bulk update used too much ram and the kernel killed it. Wow.

To fix it, I dropped the production site down to 8 mongrels instead of 20. vmstat shows 500+MB free, update worked.

The original plan to have 20 mongrels was when that project powered the static content too, but now radiant manages that (with it’s own 4 mongrels). With site traffic being much lower than expected, and 20 being too much, dropping to 8 seemed right.