The examples directory in the Circus repository contains a few examples to get you started.
Open a shell and cd into it:
$ cd examples
Now try to run the example1.ini config:
$ circusd example1.ini
2012-03-19 13:29:48 [7843] [INFO] Starting master on pid 7843
2012-03-19 13:29:48 [7843] [INFO] running dummy process [pid 7844]
2012-03-19 13:29:48 [7843] [INFO] running dummy process [pid 7845]
2012-03-19 13:29:48 [7843] [INFO] running dummy process [pid 7846]
2012-03-19 13:29:48 [7843] [INFO] running dummy process [pid 7847]
2012-03-19 13:29:48 [7843] [INFO] running dummy process [pid 7848]
2012-03-19 13:29:48 [7843] [INFO] running dummy2 process [pid 7849]
2012-03-19 13:29:48 [7843] [INFO] running dummy2 process [pid 7850]
2012-03-19 13:29:48 [7843] [INFO] running dummy2 process [pid 7851]
Congrats, you have 8 workers running !
Now run in a separate shell the listener script:
$ python listener.py
This script will print out all events happening in Circus. Try for instance to kill a worker:
$ kill 7849
You should see a few lines popping into the listener shell.
If you are brave enough, you can try the web socket demo with a web socket compatible browser. It will stream every event into the web page.