On Tue, 19 Dec 2000, Justin wrote:
> I've been catching up on the modperl list archives, and would
> just like to recommend "mathopd" as an image web server.
I think you'll find thttpd (http://www.acme.com/software/thttpd/) faster
and somewhat better documented. However, I'd like to point out that we've
had no problems using Apache as an image server. We need the ability to
serve HTTPS images, which mathopd and thttpd can't do, but more than that
we've found the performance to be more than good enough with a stripped
down Apache server.
> After having difficulties with the sheer number of front end apache
> processes necessary to handle 10 backend modperls, (difficulties: high
> load average and load spikes, kernel time wasted scheduling lots of
> httpds, higher than expected latency on simple requests)
Load averages are tricky beasts. The load can get high on our machines
when many processes are running, but it doesn't seem to mean much: almost
no CPU is being used, the network is not saturated, the disk is quiet,
response is zippy, etc. This leads me to think that these load numbers
are not significant.
Select-based servers are very cool though, and a good option for people
who don't need SSL and want to squeeze great performance out of budget
hardware.
- Perrin
