Mysterious Mongrel Rails crash

Question

Running Mongrel 1.1.5 on Rails 2.1.2 using PostgreSQL 8.3 via ruby-pg 0.7.9 on OS X 10.4 server...

Added restful_authentication and exception_notification, the latter of which appears to be doing me no good when Mongrel simply dies with "Illegal instruction" every time I select /RESOURCE_NAME/new.

Doesn't matter what resource.

In development.log I see it's declaring its intent to render /layouts/RESOURCE_NAME.html.erb and then ... nothing. No stack trace, no anything. server.log is empty.

This is something of a showstopper and I'm not sure what to do. I tried running webbrick, a la:

script/server webbrick --force

But it ignores my wishes and loads mongrel anyway.

Any pointers would be appreciated.

Answer 1

My guess would be that it's dying when it drops from Ruby down into the Postgress C-library to talk to the database. Possible causes of this might be

• You've got the ruby-pg gem for a different OS or version somehow.
• Your ruby-pg doesn't match the Postgres libs on your system.
• Something else...

Answer 2

Illegal instruction usally happens when you try run a binary from an other OS/ABI/Architecture. Maybe 32bit vs 64bit? Check your libs!