[lug] [OT] Apache 1.3 vs. 2.0 on Linux

[rm at fabula.de]

On Fri, Apr 30, 2004 at 02:47:31PM -0400, Michael D. Hirsch wrote:
> On Thursday 29 April 2004 06:46 pm, Dhruva B. Reddy wrote:
> > I did some research a while ago which suggests that the main benefit of
> > Apache 2.0 is its multithreadedness.  I am under the impression that the
> > overhead of forking processes in Linux is relatively low, and therefore
> > 2.0 doesn't buy you much (especially considering the maturity and module
> > support of 1.3).
> 
> It's not the overhead of forking that is important, it is that apache 1.3 
> forks a bunch of processes and that's all you get.  If you run out, it 
> doesn't start any more.  On theother hand, if you decide to fork a whole 
> bunch then you are using up a lot of resources that you don't need to use up 
> most of the time.
> 

??? Are you saying that apache doesn't increase the number of processes
when i runs out of available ones? That's certainly not true. You can
set the number of minimum processes as well as the number of maximum
processes (very important!) and the max number of _idle_ processes.
Our webserver has a minimum count as low as 15 but does fork up to
1000 servers during peak hours (one needs to tweak/patch the kernel
to be able to use such high process counts ...).


 HTH Ralf Mattes
> It can join threads when too many are idle.
> 
> For your uses it sounds like apache 1.3 is fine, since you aren't doing 
> anything fancy with it.  You could even eliminate it entirely.
> 
> Michael
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