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Almost 70% of sites on the internet are served by Apache, a completely Open
Source, free web server. Quite an achievement for open source software, especially
considering Microsoft's share is less than 20%
There are other web servers of course, which all provide various other features...
I considered quite a few alternatives when building this new server, all of
course are Open Source.
The Apache Servers
The biggest, and arguably still the best, web server is Apache which is now
available in two variants - Apache 1.3 and Apache 2.0, both have their advantages
and disadvantages.
Apache 1.3
A long running, well established, and stable web server that is considered pretty
much the standard now.
I have always used apache, for all of my previous sites and servers, and have
now come to understand most of it's configuration very well. Also, Apache 1.3
is still considered the most stable platform for PHP, and it's VirtualHost support
and the power of .htaccess files for site and even directory specific configuration
make it an excellent server for shared hosting.
Apache is the default web server on most Linux distributions, Including my
new distro of choice - Debian. This would make it wonderfully simple to install
(i.e. do nothing, it's already there) and also I could simply copy across all
the old config files and, in theory, they'll work.
On the downside, Apache 1.3 is now showing it's age, and is surely soon to
be discontinued now that Apache 2.0 is stable. Therefore, I have decided not
to continue to use Apache 1.3.X on my servers.
At present this server is running Apache 1.3, despite what's said above...
explained later
Apache 2.0
Apache 2.0 complete rewrite of Apache, only recently considered stable enough
for production use, destined to replace the Apache 1.3.X server through time.
At the time of writing, the latest version is 2.0.48, which is their 11th Public
Release. I have found Apache 2.0 to be completely stable, even with PHP 4.3x,
despite the various bugs that have been reported at times with that combination.
Obviously, having PHP is of the utmost importance to me, considering this whole
site (and every other one i've built!) uses it.
Debian doesn't have a package yet for PHP for Apache 2, although Apache 2 itself
is there.. I have found a third-party package that provides php4 as a module
for Apache 2.0 in Debian, which works great!
Apache 2.0 uses completely different configuration files, which I must admit
I prefer, which are close enough to the Apache 1.3 ones that it's not difficult
to migrate or to learn to use the new configs.
I had decided to use Apache 2.0 as the primary web server on this server, but
it's now changed back to 1.3.X... explained later!
Caudium (Roxen)
Caudium is a completely Open Source web server based on Roxen, with a few unique
and very powerful features. I like this server, but it's very different from
Apache, and indeed any other web server, It's mainly configured from a web interface,
allowing virtual sites to be set up easily.
Where Caudium is truly unique is in it's modules. There are modules for almost
everything including the nice tag which renders text graphically (as a PNG),
there are also tags for generating 'business' graphics (charts, graphs etc...)
and for image manipulation. The RXML markup even supports if / then / else statements
and even SQL queries.
There is even a photo gallery modules which, with one tag, will look through
a folder of images and generate clickable thumbnails and prev/next links. For
rapid development of dynamic site (including nice headings, and tab-based navigation)
there is no better platform, It's easy to learn, fast and powerful
However, Caudium cannot handle the same load as Apache, it isn't as efficient,
particularly when it comes to running PHP within pages. And I don't want to
be developing sites which require a specific web server, it seems to defeat
the purpose of everything following standards, I can take this site and deploy
it on any server so long as it supports PHP4, if I used the extra tags offered
by Roxen/Caudium, this wouldn't be possible.
Caudium is installed on this server, mainly as a development environment which
I also occasionally use for generating images, which I then save as static files
and can include them in pages served by the standard Apache 2.0 server. It also
enables me to host sites that require Caudium for others
thttpd
thttpd is used by several big names including Demon Internet and Global Internet,
it's also used by mtv.com and a couple of the leading banner ad companies.
thttpd also includes a couple of unique features not found in any other web
server (at least without extra modules) including URL-based Traffic Throttling.
Where thttpd really excels, is in it's speed and load it can take before slowing
down or dropping connections. It's also incredibly efficient in it's use of
system resources, which is always a good thing.
thttpd is only around 400k (as opposed to Apache which is nearer 6Mb) and has
only 7,230 lines of source code. It is incredibly secure, fast, and can handle
720 requests per second (for small files) as opposed to around 300 with Apache.
Additionally thttpd is considered very secure.
So why ain't I using it?, Firstly it's not ideal for PHP-based sites, Apache
and even Caudium have much better support for PHP and are more flexible. Besides,
the upstream on this server could never serve 1000 simultaneous connections,
so although I can understand why Demon need something this scalable on their
web servers, I dont.
Notes on Apache 2.0
I say above that I like, and use, Apache 2.0 yet this site uses Apache 1.3.
Why? The aforementioned third-party module provides PHP support, but not MySQL
support. I will not compile it myself, because it confuses Debian's package
manager. So until Debian releases a php4 module for Apache 2 in the official
sources, I'm sticking to 1.3...
I will, of course, move as soon as that module appears!
About the author:
Ross McKillop
IRoss.net |
