Linode Forum

[armbruster]

What do you use? Apache2, nginx, Lighttpd? Something else? Explain here.

[aot2002]

apache 2, php 5, mysql 5 on a Linode 720 :shock:

[Richard]

I'm learning nginx right now. Seems easy enough (having never done anything at the web-server level) -- and most tests show it's great for memory savings compared to Apache2.

My only issue is I keep getting a "page is temporarily not available" after I've gone to the page a few times -- but I'll save that for a different thread somewhere :)

I'm using it for hosting Ruby/Sinatra/Rack web applications.

[turl]

I use lighttpd because it's really fast, and easy to configure. I found nginx hard to configure, and apache was "too heavy" for my 360. I'm not saying they're bad, they are great apps, but lighttpd suited me best.

I also run PHP with XCache, and MySQL.

[armbruster]

Yeah, I've been using Apache2, but it's just too heavy.

I tried using Nginx, but it's just too hard to setup (PHP and MySQL), even though I'd use it if I didn't need PHP or MySQL.

Lighttpd looked good, but upon trying, it just didn't feel very tidy to use, and it seemed hard to use.

So I went back to Apache2. I'm thinking of giving Lighttpd a try again, though.

Did I miss any other good web servers?

[geoff2]

I didn't find nginx that difficult to set up. It is more challenging than Apache in that it there isn't an easy, pre-configured setup to get php apps running, but I managed to do it even though this was the first server I setup thanks to some instructions I found.

I did have some difficulty getting perl working through nginx, and even now it's a bit clunky and probably wouldn't scale as well as a mod_perl/Apache config. However, it's acceptable for my limited purposes.

If anyone is trying to get nginx configured, I'm happy to try to help, although no promises!

[Richard]

So far nginx has been fine to set up.

My problem I mentioned turns out to be an exception thrown by my Ruby app and the "Page is temporarily not available" is nginx's way of saying that.

I can't compare to other web server's configs though.

[turl]

Cherokee is light too, but I didn't find it's url rewriting useful, and it was a feature I needed. It's worth a try though.

[armbruster]

turl wrote: Cherokee is light too, but I didn't find it's url rewriting useful, and it was a feature I needed. It's worth a try though.

Cherokee advertises Cherokee everywhere. And the web panel is only accessible with tunneling, so it's hard to use it on a Linode.

Any other web servers worth listing here for other people looking?

[turl]

Why difficult? You can use tunneling on a just-installed linode without any extra work heh

[armbruster]

turl wrote: Why difficult? You can use tunneling on a just-installed linode without any extra work heh

Yeah, but it's not that fun to do everyday. And the shameless self-advertising is just plain wrong.

[krmdrms]

We talked about this issue with armbruster before. I'm using nginx for serve static files (nginx good with static files) and apache with mod_php for php files. Also, APC for opcode cache.

So, if you ask me why are using both? no answer, This setup brought me nothing. I havent got much traffic and thats why i cant answer this question. Some people said this increases performance. I have loose memory so i didint quite remember why. :)
And this setup not easy if you have multiple web sites.

Here is a short video about mod_php and FastCGI
http://www.joomlaperformance.com/articles/webcasts/why_mod_php_is_bad_for_performance_52_58.html

With my setup nginxy deals with static stuff. Apache deals with php scripts.

I tried lighttpd too. No differences between nginx and lighttpd. But i like nginx's conf syntax more :)

When talking with armbruster, i decided to go back my nginx & fastcgi setup. I started with installing lighy's spawn-cgi utility. Then i realise why i'm using apache. I had some problems about rewrite rules for wordpress. I get used to .htaccess files. There were some tricks about it and worked ok but at last all my stats were point to 404 page. I'm not good at regexp stuff. So the problem is about mine lack of knowledge.

I prefer nginx + fastcgi if i fix my rewrite issues.
Also nginx has a channel at freenode.

[Nexx]

Im currently using the following on my Linode 360:
nginx - 0.7.61
php - 5.2.9
mysql 5.1.53

It's currently running 32bit Arch Linux.

I use a custom-written script to launch php FastCGI processes using spawn-fcgi from lighttpd. I don't run a mail system, that's all handled by google, mysql has InnoDB disabled too.

My website only receives a few hits daily so a VPS is really an overkill for my needs, but I also run a ventrilo server and I love being able to get my hands dirty to configure every little thing.

My current memory stats are as follows:
Code: [nexx@destiny ~]$ free -m
             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:           348        288         60          0         58        196
-/+ buffers/cache:         33        315
Swap:          359          2        357

I have more than a little breathing room for my website to expand ^.~

[JDM]

I really like lighttpd. It's relatively easy to configure, "just works" with FastCGI (at least PHP), and supports all the options (vhosting, rewrites, etc) that I need. Obviously, the "light" side of the picture is also a bonus.

That said, in any shared environment I'd probably go for Apache for the flexibility of .htaccess files, which I find that I can't live without on servers where I can't get directly to the httpd configuration.

[dbb]

lighttpd here