freebsd stable - Apr 2005 - FreeBSD and very heavy web server

Hi,

i must set up a web server. I want to do this on FreeBSD 5.X. and
Apache 1.3 for this and php4.
I've read `man tuning` but there aren't to much informations.

Does anybody of you can share his/her experience?

Thank you.

Best Regards,
p.

peceka wrote:
>
>Does anybody of you can share his/her experience?
>  
>
What exactly are you looking for?  :-)

-- 
"Tree!"

peceka wrote on Thu 21.04.2005 11:02
> i must set up a web server. I want to do this on FreeBSD 5.X. and
> Apache 1.3 for this and php4.
What do you mean by 'very heavy web server'? Please be more specific.

- Do you expect many parallel connections? Default configuration
  allows for 512 child processes with apache, so you might want
  to set this higher during compilation (eg set to 1024).
- Does it make sense to separate static and dynamic requests?
  You might want to use separate servers(*) for static and
  dynamic requests, using a quick low-footprint webserver for
  static requests that allows for many parallel requests. Maybe
  lighttpd is all you need (ymmv)
- Make sure you don't run out of mbufs, open file descriptors etc.
- ...


Regards,
Holger Kipp

(*) eg shttpd, lighttpd,...

peceka wrote on Fri 22.04.2005 10:40
> On 4/21/05, Kipp Holger <h.kipp@eurowings.com> wrote: 
> > peceka wrote on Thu 21.04.2005 11:02
> Yes, I expect many parallel connections... 
> I've got two machines for that, so traffic will be divided by DNS
> round robin. But 1024 child processes will be good thing too, thanks.
> > - Does it make sense to separate static and dynamic requests?
> >  You might want to use separate servers(*) for static and
> >  dynamic requests, using a quick low-footprint webserver for
> >  static requests that allows for many parallel requests. Maybe
> >  lighttpd is all you need (ymmv)
> Unfortunately, all pages will be dynamic :\
You don't have any static requests for .gif/.jpg/.css-files etc.?

lighttpd does support php4, CGI, FastCGI and load-balanced FastCGI,
and also php-code caching. Just go to http://www.lighttpd.net/ 
I haven't tried it myself, though, as we have slightly more
complicated requirements here ;-)
> > - Make sure you don't run out of mbufs, open file descriptors etc.
> Ok, I'll have an eye open on this.
If you have a lot of parallel connections you might also want to
monitor tcp connections and tune corresponding sysctls, so you don't
have any useless entries in your tables. But I'm not an expert in
this field (especially with10k+ open sockets...) - the default
settings have worked for me most of the time.

Regards,
Holger