Rails - Jul 2006 - How to detect and simply signal that the DB is/got down?

Hi all,

If the DB server is down when the rails server starts, or if it gets 
down while the rails server is running, I need to
  - detect the problem
  - display a simple error message  "DB is down: contact support".


Inserting
    ActiveRecord::Base.retrieve_connection()
at the very begining of ApplicationController will trigger an error - 
that can be captured - when the class is loaded, but before the 
controller is instantiated => cannot render anything.
And it would not help if the DB gets down after the app has been running 
(and the controller has been cached).

How can I solve this problem?
Thanks in advance.

Alain

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