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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.carno.net.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!munnari.OZ.AU!news.Hawaii.Edu!news.caldera.com!enews.sgi.com!news.mathworks.com!howland.erols.net!feed1.news.erols.com!news From: Ken Bigelow <kbigelow@www.play-hookey.com> Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc,comp.unix.bsd.bsdi.misc Subject: Re: Tuning BSD as Web Server (was Re: Unix too slow for a Web server?) Date: Fri, 08 Nov 1996 19:48:45 +0000 Organization: Erol's Internet Services Lines: 50 Message-ID: <32838E9D.4F4F@www.play-hookey.com> References: <323ED0BD.222CA97F@pobox.com> <51rsu5$6je@flash.noc.best.net> <WINDLEY.96Sep20085157@margay.cs.byu.edu> <Dy33xK.GvE@interactive.net> <527jh9$88p@gol1.gol.com> <32482B53.6935@www.play-hookey.com> <5600s5$l1l@news.rrz.uni-koeln.de> Reply-To: kbigelow@www.play-hookey.com NNTP-Posting-Host: kenjb05.play-hookey.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.0 (Win16; U) Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc:30795 comp.unix.bsd.bsdi.misc:5240 Winfried Truemper wrote: > > Peter Evans wrote: > > : I think the best one is probably "retire apache" and use a > : decent server that doesnt spawn itself left right and silly. > : I quite like spinner, or roxen, or whatever it is called > : today. (http://www.roxen.com/ ??) > > I tried in on a machine with 600.000 hits/day and it crashed after 2 > hours. Seems like Roxen*Challenger is currently not able to drive really > large sites. > Sad, I liked the flexible and easy configuration of it. > > Ken Bigelow (kbigelow@www.play-hookey.com) wrote: > > : Oh, come now! Yes, if you run Apache in stand-alone mode it will > : maintain between 5 and 10 (by default -- adjustable) idle httpd servers > : waiting for access requests. This is for faster response. > > Funny that people believe this apache-PR. Most servers run in "forking > mode" to hide bugs. On large sites the "idle httpd servers" cost you > additional 32MB of memory without any advantage. > > See http://www.probe.net/~mgleason/ncftpd/perf.html > for a comparism between an old forking ftpd and a non-forking version. > > Apache is reliable that's the only advantage of it. Hmmm. Since Apache is reliable (and it has been very much so, for me), that would seem to imply no need to hide bunches of bugs. I also seriously wonder about your '32 MB' figure -- by default, Apache keeps only 5 to 10 idle processes going; extras are killed off during quiet times. You can change these numbers, and the default max of 150 servers if you wish. Since my server only *has* 32 MB of RAM (and isn't all that busy, yet), and top still reports plenty of unused memory available even while hits are taking place, that figure cannot be a fixed number. The key point for me is that it works reliably, remains stable, and does *not* demand a lot of system overhead on my site. As the load picks up, which it is gradually doing, I may find it necessary to check out other servers. But I see no point in changing until it really does become necessary. -- Ken Are you interested in | byte-sized education | http://www.play-hookey.com over the Internet? |