Rails fails when db fails, still far behind Merb #Msg - 1

        Controllers shouldn't be broken if the database is off, if they don't
use it.  Could it be they're implicitly using the database, for
sessions or something of that nature?  If that's the case, you might
be able to implement your own more robust session handler which deals
with absent DB errors.  Or perhaps eschews the database all together,
and uses something like a high availability memcache or redis cluster.

Regards
Jon

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