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/**************************************************************************/
[task #120] Latest Modifications:

Changes by: 
                Mathieu Roy <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
'Date: 
                dim 19.09.2004 à 12:13 (Europe/Paris)

            What     | Removed                   | Added
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Should be Finished on | mer 02.06.2004 à 00:00    | lun 02.06.2008 à 00:00
            Priority | 3 - Low                   | 1 - Later
          Resolution | None                      | Later







/**************************************************************************/
[task #120] Full Item Snapshot:

URL: <http://gna.org/task/?func=detailitem&item_id=120>
Project: Gna! Administration
Submitted by: Vincent Caron
On: lun 02.02.2004 à 18:49

Should Start On:  lun 02.02.2004 à 00:00
Should be Finished on:  lun 02.06.2008 à 00:00
Category:  Services Functionalities
Priority:  1 - Later
Resolution:  Later
Privacy:  Public
Assigned to:  zerodeux
Percent Complete:  0%
Status:  Open
Effort:  0.00


Summary:  PHP support for homepages

Original Submission:  Evaluate load and security issues for PHP support on 
home.gna.org.

Commentaires
------------------


-------------------------------------------------------
Date: ven 14.05.2004 à 19:47        By: Mathieu Roy <yeupou>
« homepage.gna.org would be a shame IMHO. When you reach 10 pages to maintain, 
a little PHP glue »



I tend to disagree with that opinion. PHP makes sense only if you need to have 
dynamic content. If you have static content, there are better ways to generate 
it, and generate it once only.



I really think that people that want PHP should host the website somewhere 
else. Whatever way it is handled, PHP will still takes much more than apache + 
static files (and poses other security troubles) and I think that website 
hosting should be the lesser important priority for gna: it is easy to get a 
www host already, unlike development tools. 



I really think that a CGI www host should only happen on a 4th server. We are 
not exactly aware of the cost of SVN and Arch (which one we do not currently 
plainly support - or support) and I think we should not make fast move, 
especially to fullfil non-important needs.



(I still can CGI an non-important need because : this is not hard to find such 
host ; in most case PHP is used to serve static page, with is just costly in 
resources)





-------------------------------------------------------
Date: ven 14.05.2004 à 18:19        By: Vincent Caron <zerodeux>
Some ressources on load limiting :



  * Apache core RLimitCPU, RLimitMEM, RLimitNPROC directives are only effective 
for external CGIs, not for embedded scripts like mod_php and mod_perl.





  * That's why PHP has its own limits in php.ini : 
http://cvs.php.net/co.php/php-src/php.ini-dist



max_execution_time = 30     ; Maximum execution time of each script, in seconds

max_input_time = 60     ; Maximum amount of time each script may spend parsing 
request data

memory_limit = 8M      ; Maximum amount of memory a script may consume (8MB)



  Since the maximum number of PHP interpreter instances is bound by the maximum 
size of Apache process pool, there is an indirect way to limit load (and mem 
usage).





  * Apache could be globally ressource controled with ulimit, since it's not 
alone on the machine it could help. I've never tested this possibility.



-------------------------------------------------------
Date: ven 14.05.2004 à 10:23        By: Vincent Caron <zerodeux>
You're more concerned about load issues, I'm more about security ones, we 
should succeed to make a wise decision :)



I'm currently working at an ISP where all issues relate to security and poorly 
written Perl and PHP scripts. However I must confess I never had to deal with 
ressource issues (wether by user mistake or mal-intentionned DoS).



Not having some scripting support on homepage.gna.org would be a shame IMHO. 
When you reach 10 pages to maintain, a little PHP glue makes your life much 
easier. Maybe simply enbaling SSI could help, but it's a bit primitive. I would 
only avoid installing PHP if there were *dread serious* issues against it.



Proposal: have a severly limited PHP support with only core libs, and NO (ever, 
ever) database, GD, and other funky things which regularly jeopardize our first 
concerns. I'm searching now for some info on PHP & CPU load management.



-------------------------------------------------------
Date: ven 14.05.2004 à 09:37        By: Vincent Caron <zerodeux>
[notes from Mathieu, support ticket #229]



Hello,



I'd like to stress the fact that the main reason why we do not provide PHP is 
not security but resources. It is not really hard to jail PHP in a pretty 
secure way.



But I do not think we should take the risk to waste CPU time and RAM for PHP. 
There are free provider that proposes PHP and people still have the option to 
run their own webserver: in this case, we would not fullfill no one else do.



Considering that a company like Free took 3 years to get a clean setup that 
avoid having PHP completely sucking a bunch of server resources, I would 
definitely not be happy if PHP was set up on Gna! machine will Gna! is not 5 
month old and his number of users increasing at high speed (proportionaly, 
because Gna! is young -- every hundred user makes a difference).



So I would definitely not say "we are planning to support PHP soon". It would 
not be wise. Also, cvs and home are currently on the same machine : I would not 
think wise either to let users use PHP on the machine hosting cvs. It is not 
even a matter of having PHP secure: we already can do that. But as secure an 
installation can be, it can still be cracked. And it can more easily be cracked 
with PHP available on the same box.



-------------------------------------------------------
Date: lun 02.02.2004 à 19:00        By: Mathieu Roy <yeupou>
I think that we'll be able to evaluate correctly the load issue only in several 
month, once the servers will be running in a state we could consider as usual, 
with services really used.












For detailed info, follow this link:
<http://gna.org/task/?func=detailitem&item_id=120>

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