LightTPD - as basis for webserver(on DSL)

Forum: Apps
Topic: LightTPD - as basis for webserver(on DSL)
started by: Wazza

Posted by Wazza on Jan. 10 2007,02:51

Hi all

Love to get some thoughts on using DSL as a webserver (possibly virtualised), specifically with LightTPD.

I'm kinda fed up with huge installs of Linux, difficulty settling on a distro and want to utilise older hardware or virtualise(this would be awesome) for fault tolerance/disaster recovery.

Looking forward to input.

Posted by ^thehatsrule^ on Jan. 10 2007,03:30

there's an extension for that by mikshaw available in mydsl

Posted by Wazza on Jan. 10 2007,04:05

I'd only just spotted that extension prior to my post. Was hoping to find out peoples experience with it and if it's a good alternative to a "big" linux/windows running Apache.....

Posted by mikshaw on Jan. 10 2007,14:50

my personal experience with lighttpd has so far been favorable. It's much much smaller than Apache, and has been shown to be faster. < http://www.lighttpd.net/benchmark/ >

I have not done anything with databases, so can't comment on that. For all I know the mydsl extension may not even work with sqlite. It is very flexible, however, and seems to be easier to configure and maintain than Apache. Personally I feel many modern software packages are plagued with unnecessary bulk and complexity, and Apache is among them. Lighty, while perhaps not as robust as Apache, is more than enough for most purposes.

In any case, I'm currently running a lan webserver powered by lighttpd and so far have been enjoying the experience much more than my brief time with Apache. It's running on Slackware rather than DSL, however, so that may make a difference.

Posted by ReTeP on Jan. 10 2007,18:10

I've installed lightTPD and I'm loving it. But what about installing php. I read something about fastCGI etc and frankly I don't understand it. Can somebody explain to me how2 install php so it works with lightTPD

Posted by mikshaw on Jan. 10 2007,20:06

PHP 4 is available in the "system" section of the mydsl repository. You can also use Perl, Python, Lua, Ruby, Bash, or any other programming language (as far as I know) with cgi or fastcgi.

fastcgi is another thing I haven't tried, though. Since my site is lan access only, I don't need the speed of fastcgi and opted for the simpler plain old cgi

Posted by ReTeP on Jan. 11 2007,12:28

Ok, thanx