Should we add Lighttpd as an install/upgrade option?

Should we add Lighttpd as an install/upgrade option?

  • Yes, I would like to use lighttpd.

    Votes: 177 56.4%

  • I would like to use Nginx

    Votes: 66 21.0%

  • No, there are other things I would rather have.

    Votes: 71 22.6%
  • Total voters
    314
DirectAdmin Support said:
No, you can use any version of php you want. Zend 3.3.0 sometimes does not work with php which is why you get no plugin output in DA. DA itself doesn't care what version of php is being used, hence we still include 3.2.8 (to prevent php from breaking)
We always use static binaries when we can. The only reason we don't for newer systems is because the compilers won't let us due to linking with certain libraries and functions. Older systems allow us to create static binaries.

John
Click to expand...

John,

Instead of working on things like litespeed how about you guys work on clustered DA, now that would be awesome!
 
I dont understand why people want to switch from apache. What are your reasons?
 
My reasons for lighttpd are: smaller memory footprint, better performance, embedded FastCGI support.
 
Apache 2.2 is very fast with dynamic content when coupled with eAccelerator and has no FastCGI issues. We serve 10K to 15K dynamic pages a minute. Nginx can be manually added to an existing DA install to handle static content. My vote is there are more pressing issues such as up-to-date FreeBSD support and support for ports and other stuff.

Lighttpd solved an Apache problem that hasn't existed since Apache 2 came out. This is why their market share had declined to less than 1%. See Netcraft's March 2009 Web Server Survey. Apache 2.x + eAccelerator is a LOT faster than Lighttpd + eAccelerator. NGINX has more than triple the marketshare of Lighttpd. NGINX compliments Apache by taking care of the static content requests thereby preventing simple static content requests from using more the more expensive dynamic-capable processes of Apache. There are simple instructions for implementing NGINX with DirectAdmin on this forum.
 
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Hi,

i like nginx more.
Site like wordpress.com had problems availability with over 7000 request/s with nginx no problem anymore.
 
I would love if you would add support for Phusion Passenger or mod_passenger which allows easy deployment of WSGI and Rails/Ruby webapplications via Apache. Of course, you can then use nginx for the traffic loading.
 
Hello,

We have no immediate plans to support lighthttpd or nginx. In the future that could change, but not at the moment.

John
 
Implementing lighttpd will place DirectAdmin in a very favourable position.

LxAdmin has already experienced explosive popularity due to it's light footprint.
DA can achieve that and more, as LxLabs have terribly support and an even worse interface.
 
tsj5j said:
Implementing lighttpd will place DirectAdmin in a very favourable position. LxAdmin has already experienced explosive popularity due to it's light footprint. DA can achieve that and more, as LxLabs have terribly support and an even worse interface.
Click to expand...
Am I missing something? LxAdmin uses Apache. The trend is not toward low performance CPUs and small amounts of ram in any case. Customers are pressing vendors for features and performance in nearly every aspect.

Apache 2.2 MPM Event is here but classified experimental.(Which is better than some others released products.) With little effort on DA's part, this product brings the strengths of prefork and worker, without the disadvantages of a reverse proxy like nginx. It currently lacks support for key modules such as mod_ssl or any input filters for that matter, but at least the direction is to make them work. There is no theoretical reason why it shouldn't outperform nginx in a reverse proxy mode, and Apache CLI wildly outperforms Lighttpd and nginx today if they try to do dynamic content with php + fastcgi. The only place php + fastcgi makes sense today in a dynamic environment is where the content being served is heavily lopsided toward static content where the time is spent sending the content, not creating dynamic pages. Movies, large graphics, etc. Apache 2.2 MPM Event gives/will give the best of both worlds. fastcgi is not fast. It's simply a lot faster than regular cgi because it stays running. It's been a work-around to make non-thread-safe libraries safe and security. It's not a desired long-term solution.
 
I think it would be great to offer lighttpd as alternative if this is viable for directadmin. I would defintely use it. But I guess there will be some issues arise like trnasferring backups from other servers running apache and things like that.

But yeah, Id love to see it or at least an option to use it for images

BTW on ngnix, It hasnt been updated since 2005 has it?
 
felosi said:
But yeah, Id love to see it or at least an option to use it for images...BTW on ngnix, It hasnt been updated since 2005 has it?
Click to expand...

Amen! I agree with that. I've been thinking about this a lot lately. The problem is that's a proxy and it kills some of the important advantages of Apache such as mod_rewrite, and a lot of the other modules in Apache are far better than what is available with the little servers. There are work-aorunds, but the cures end up being worse than the disease. The easy way out that I see is for the images to be serviced by another IP, but that doesn't fit well with the shared hosting paradigm. Apache MPM event looks like the answer, but it's experimental and has some key modules are missing yet.

nginx AFAIK is pretty healthy judging by the market share it is gaining at the expense of Lighttpd. I don't know how often nginx gets updated, but their latest is the 4/9/2009.
 
I definately think supporting Lighttpd is the best thing you could do.

DA is extremely apache-biased unless you add that (hence why I don't use DA on my lighttpd servers).
 
IT_Architect said:
Apache MPM event looks like the answer, but it's experimental and has some key modules are missing yet.
Click to expand...
I did some networking with people working on the project. I learned that the statement in their docs about no support for mod_ssl and most other input filters date back to the 2005 release of Apache 2.2. That is no longer the case today. Apparently mod_ssl and mod_rewrite and everything else has been working for quite awhile. I queried for the issues and noted that almost every one has a patch available. Released software has at least that many bugs as I see here:

https://issues.apache.org/bugzilla/...me&field0-0-0=noop&type0-0-0=noop&value0-0-0=

It may be exciting to think that we could use Nginx or Lighttpd with DirectAdmin, but from a shared hosting perspective, it would be an untenable situation to limit people to the small cross section of features non-Apache servers provide. We like to think we don't use a lot of Apache's capabilities, but you can't even do a decent captcha on a contact form without them, and who knows what else we would reach for and not find. Neither us nor web hosting customers are accustomed to thinking in terms of working around web server limitations when deploying web apps. So then how many DirectAdmin customers could actually use it?

I haven't tried MPM Event yet. I've read the comments of a few people who use it. According to them, they were never able to make MPM Worker fast nor reliable while MPM Event just works and is fast. The MPM Event option provides all of the capabilities of Apache plus the event-based front end of an Nginx or Lighttpd. The next Apache, 2.4, adds to that small-object caching and a memcache distributed cache.

The need for specialty servers has been shrinking steadily since Apache 2.x came out, and especially 2.2 back in 2005. Running PHP under Fastcgi is not a performance advantage, it is a performance limitation required to make up for one of the many limitations of these servers. Netcraft statistics confirm they have ceded the dynamic ground to Apache, and now, with an Apache event-driven front end, the ground specialty servers will occupy will be reduced yet again. Their only remaining bastion will be clustered environments where separate physical servers handle static content. Very few of those servers will be running DirectAdmin. I'm all for adding another server if it makes sense for the future. The way it appears to me, what is being proposed only makes sense for the past, and maybe not even the present.

Adding MPM Event to custombuild would be a cake-walk, plus DA and everyone else is already very familiar with Apache and it's modules. For a non-threaded Prefork-based environment with user based security advantages of FastCGI, there are extensions such as MPM ITK, MPM PerUser, etc.
 
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ok it' been 2 years now since this post was started. Is directadmin ready for lighttpd yet? if not, what is the ETA?
 
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