Is it normal for so many ruby processes to be running?

I'm having issues with a site on my server loading and was running 'top' and saw this:

alt text http://share.shpigford.com/images/ruby_processes-20091112-103834.png

Dozens of ruby processes...and I have no idea what that means or if that'开发者_高级运维s normal. :)

I have a feeling that your PassengerMaxPoolSize is set too high for such a small amount of memory. Just totaling that up your ruby processes are eating 81% of your available memory.

See this related discussion on ServerFault. This question should probably be migrated over there.

I don't know what is normal on your system.

In a sever production environment ruby scales by adding processes, so I would expect to see at least one process per CPU core. (Real or virtual - my i7 920 has 8 virtual cores and needs 8 ruby processes for a 100% CPU load.)

Dozens sound like a lot, but it could be possible if your site is using lots of ruby for miscellaneous daemon processes.

I think you'll have to ask someone who knows what is supposed to run on the system.