This is Async Observer -- a Rails plugin that provides deep integration with Beanstalk. For more information, see http://async-observer.rubyforge.org/. For more information on Beanstalk, see its home page at http://xph.us/software/beanstalkd/. Worker Options: -d : daemonize --pid [path to pidfile] : drop a pid file to a path -e [test,production,development] : set the rails environment Example Usage: start 3 workers ./vendor/plugins/async_observer/bin/worker -d --pid log/worker1.pid -e production ./vendor/plugins/async_observer/bin/worker -d --pid log/worker2.pid -e production ./vendor/plugins/async_observer/bin/worker -d --pid log/worker3.pid -e production kill one kill -s INT `cat log/worker1.pid` Remember kill a worker will cause it to go into a shutdown phase. Run the above again to kill immediately, but remember all jobs in the workers queue is lost at that point...