Saving RAM on Shared Hosting with persistent process web service (e.g. Ruby on Rails, Turbogears, etc.)

Question

I use Turbogears on my shared hosting for one-off applications, but I don't need these applications active all the time.

Is there a way to start the service when I request it, and then kill the process when it's idle?

For example, Turbogears will have a persistent process: "paster serve production.ini" that I would like killed if there hasn't been any activity for a while.

On the flipside, if the process is killed, I want it to start up again when someone attempts to access the port.

How can I accomplish this on shared hosting?

Answer 1

You can try using passenger. Eventhough it is originally for rails, but I have found many people successfully deployed django with passenger. I think it will work with turbogears as well. Good luck.