title: How do I gracefully shut down a Mongrel web server
body: <p>My RubyOnRails app is set up with the usual pack of mongrels behind Apache configuration. We've noticed that our Mongrel web server memory usage can grow quite large on certain operations and we'd really like to be able to dynamically do a graceful restart of selected Mongrel processes at any time.</p>
  
  <p>However, for reasons I won't go into here it can sometimes be <em>very</em> important that we don't interrupt a Mongrel while it is servicing a request, so I assume a simple process kill isn't the answer.</p>
  
  <p>Ideally, I want to send the Mongrel a signal that says "finish whatever you're doing and then quit before accepting any more connections".</p>
  
  <p>Is there a standard technique or best practice for this?</p>