Ruby agent release notesRSS

Better support for forking and daemonizing dispatchers (e.g. Puma, Unicorn)

The agent should now work out-of-the box with no special configuration on servers that fork or daemonize themselves (such as Unicorn or Puma in some configurations). The agent's background thread will be automatically restarted after the first transaction processed within each child process.

This change means it's no longer necessary to set the 'restart_thread_in_children setting' in your agent configuration file if you were doing so previously.

Rails 4.1 support

Rails 4.1 has shipped, and the Ruby agent is ready for it! We've been running our test suites against the release candidates with no significant issues, so we're happy to announce full compatibility with this new release of Rails.

Ruby VM measurements

The Ruby agent now records more detailed information about the performance and behavior of the Ruby VM, mainly focused around Ruby's garbage collector. This information is exposed on the new 'Ruby VM' tab in the UI. For details about what is recorded, see:

http://docs.newrelic.com/docs/ruby/ruby-vm-stats

Separate in-transaction GC timings for web and background processes

Previously, an application with GC instrumentation enabled, and both web and background processes reporting in to it would show an overly inflated GC band on the application overview graph, because data from both web and non-web transactions would be included. This has been fixed, and GC time during web and non-web transactions is now tracked separately.

More accurate GC measurements on multi-threaded web servers

The agent could previously have reported inaccurate GC times on multi-threaded web servers such as Puma. It will now correctly report GC timings in multi-threaded contexts.

Improved ActiveMerchant instrumentation

The agent will now trace the store, unstore, and update methods on ActiveMerchant gateways. In addition, a bug preventing ActiveMerchant instrumentation from working on Ruby 1.9+ has been fixed.

Thanks to Troex Nevelin for the contribution!

More robust Real User Monitoring script injection with charset meta tags

Previous versions of the agent with Real User Monitoring enabled could have injected JavaScript code into the page above a charset meta tag. By the HTML5 spec, the charset tag must appear in the first 1024 bytes of the page, so the Ruby agent will now attempt to inject RUM script after a charset tag, if one is present.

More robust connection sequence with New Relic servers

A rare bug that could cause the agent's initial connection handshake with New Relic servers to silently fail has been fixed, and better logging has been added to the related code path to ease diagnosis of any future issues.

Prevent over-counting of queue time with nested transactions

When using add_transaction_tracer on methods called from within a Rails or Sinatra action, it was previously possible to get inflated queue time measurements, because queue time would be recorded for both the outer transaction (the Rails or Sinatra action) and the inner transaction (the method given to add_transaction_tracer). This has been fixed, so only the outermost transaction will now record queue time.

Fix for Puma 2.8.0 cluster mode (3.7.3.204)

Puma's 2.8.0 release renamed a hook New Relic used to support Puma's cluster mode. This resulted in missing data for users running Puma. Thanks Benjamin Kudria for the fix!

Fix for deployment command bug (3.7.3.204)

Problems with file loading order could result in newrelic deployments failing with an unrecognized command error. This has been fixed.

Obfuscation for PostgreSQL explain plans

Fixes an agent bug with PostgreSQL where parameters from the original query could appear in explain plans sent to New Relic servers, even when SQL obfuscation was enabled. Parameters from the query are now masked in explain plans prior to transmission when transaction_tracer.record_sql is set to 'obfuscated' (the default setting).

For more information, see: https://docs.newrelic.com/docs/traces/security-for-postgresql-explain-plans

More accurate categorization of SQL statements

Some SQL SELECT statements that were previously being mis-categorized as 'SQL - OTHER' will now correctly be tagged as 'SQL - SELECT'. This particularly affected ActiveRecord users using PostgreSQL.

More reliable Typhoeus instrumentation

Fixed an issue where an exception raised from a user-specified on_complete block would cause our Typhoeus instrumentation to fail to record the request.

Update gem signing cert (3.7.2.195)

The certificate used to sign newrelic_rpm expired in February. This patch updates that for clients installing with verification.

Mongo instrumentation improvements

Users of the 'mongo' MongoDB client gem will get more detailed instrumentation including support for some operations that were not previously captured, and separation of aggregate metrics for web transactions from background jobs.

An issue with ensure_index when passed a symbol or string was also fixed. Thanks Maxime RETY for the report!

More accurate error tracing in Rails 4

Traced errors in Rails 4 applications will now be correctly associated with the transaction they occurred in, and custom attributes attached to the transaction will be correctly attached to the traced error as well.

More accurate partial-rendering metrics for Rails 4

View partials are now correctly treated as sub-components of the containing template render in Rails 4 applications, meaning that the app server breakdown graphs for Rails 4 transactions should be more accurate and useful.

Improved Unicorn 4.8.0 compatibility

A rare issue that could lead to spurrious traced errors on app startup for applications using Unicorn 4.8.0 has been fixed.

meta_request gem compatibility

An incompatibility with the meta_request gem has been fixed.

Typhoeus 0.6.4+ compatibility

A potential crash with Typhoeus 0.6.4+ when passing a URI object instead of a String instance to one of Typhoeus's HTTP request methods has been fixed.

Sequel single threaded mode fix

The agent will no longer attempt to run EXPLAIN queries for slow SQL statements issued using the Sequel gem in single-threaded mode, since doing so could potentially cause crashes.

Additional functionality for add_custom_parameters

Calling add_custom_parameters adds parameters to the system codenamed Rubicon. For more information, see http://newrelic.com/software-analytics

Correct first reported metric timespan for forking dispatchers (3.7.1.188)

The first time a newly-forked process (in some configurations) reported metric data, it would use the startup time of the parent process as the start time for that metric data instead of its own start time. This has been fixed.

Fix for Mongo ensure_index instrumentation (3.7.1.182)

The Mongo instrumentation for ensure_index in 3.7.1.180 was not properly calling through to the uninstrumented version of this method. This has been fixed in 3.7.1.182. Thanks to Yuki Miyauchi for the fix!

MongoDB support

The Ruby agent provides support for the mongo gem, versions 1.8 and 1.9! Mongo calls are captured for transaction traces along with their parameters, and time spent in Mongo shows up on the Database tab.

Support for more Mongo gems and more UI goodness will be coming, so watch http://docs.newrelic.com/docs/ruby/mongo for up-to-date status.

Harvest thread restarts for forked and daemonized processes

Historically framework specific code was necessary for the Ruby agent to successfully report data after an app forked or daemonized. Gems or scripts with daemonizing modes had to wait for agent support or find workarounds.

With 3.7.1 setting restart_thread_in_children: true in your newrelic.yml automatically restarts the agent in child processes without requiring custom code. For now the feature is opt-in, but future releases may default it on.

Fix for missing HTTP time

The agent previously did not include connection establishment time for outgoing Net::HTTP requests. This has been corrected, and reported HTTP timings should now be more accurate.

Official Rubinius support (for Rubinius >= 2.2.1)

We're happy to say that all known issues with the Ruby agent running on Rubinius have been resolved as of Rubinius version 2.2.1! See New Relic on Rubinius for the most up-to-date status.

RUM injection updates

The Ruby agent's code for both automatic and manual injection of Real User Monitoring scripts has been improved. No application changes are required, but the new injection logic is simpler, faster, more robust, and paves the way for future improvements to Real User Monitoring.

More robust communication with New Relic

Failures when transmitting data to New Relic could cause data to be held over unnecessarily to a later harvest. This has been improved both to handle errors more robustly and consistently, and to send data as soon as possible.

Fix for agent not restarting on server-side config changes

A bug in 3.6.9 caused the agent to not reset correctly after server-side config changes. New settings would not be received without a full process restart. This has been fixed.

Adding rake spec tasks to your deny list

A deny list helps the agent avoid starting during rake tasks. Some default RSpec tasks were missing. Thanks for the contribution Kohei Hasegawa!