Altenative to Apache: lighttpd

[JeffRice]

I recently switched away from Apache for my web server, in an attempt to find a less memory-hungry server. There are lots of options, but I encourage people to take a look at lighttpd. Unlike some of the other Apache alternatives, lighttpd supports SSL, virtual hosting, and pretty much everything that Apache does. It is fast, and has a very small footprint. (about 6M in my case, YMWV depend on what modules you load.)

Documentation is a little spotty (although it is improving), but the config file is pretty readable and there are a number of examples. If people are interested, I can share my .conf for getting HTTP and HTTPS connections served by a single daemon, virtual hosting, and some CGI.

Home page: http://www.lighttpd.net/

How-to: http://hacktavista.com/howto/

How-to (a little dated): http://wiki2.archlinux.org/index.php/Lighttpd%20for%20both%20ssl%20and%20non-ssl

[goopot]

How does the 6Meg memory footprint compare to an equivalent apache?

Dave.

[JeffRice]

How does the 6Meg memory footprint compare to an equivalent apache?

Dave.

It's less than 10% -- Apache-ssl on my VPS was using 78M. Both will vary depending on the number of processes, modules, etc you use -- but I think it is safe to say that lighttpd will always be smaller than apache, and seems to capably provide everything a typical VPS needs.

Jeff

[navjeet]

Jeff,

I am planning to try out lighttpd also. I am planning to run Ruby on Rails applications on it. Did you follow the howto's mentioned in your previous post or did u have to do anything special to get it running on Rimu servers. It will be great if you can share your .conf file. Are u running it on port 80 and not running apache? Just wondering...

--Navjeet

[manish]

I'd just hope that its code has been through enough capable eyeballs to feel secure with lighttpd.

[rsanheim]

Jeff,

I am planning to try out lighttpd also. I am planning to run Ruby on Rails applications on it. Did you follow the howto's mentioned in your previous post or did u have to do anything special to get it running on Rimu servers. It will be great if you can share your .conf file. Are u running it on port 80 and not running apache? Just wondering...

--Navjeet

Navjeet: I would recommend checking Rimu's bliki, they have a script for setting up RoR on RHEL4. Also, this site was guide helpful for me when I was getting rails setup on my vps.

http://brainspl.at/rails_stack.html

good luck,
- Rob

[Yenan]

Hi,

I am trying to run server side include with lighttpd on windows. I have changed the lighttpd config file to include :

server.modules = ( "mod_ssi", ...}
ssi.extension = ( ".shtml" )

However when I try to load an index.shtml I get a "404 - Not Found" error.

Am I doing something worng ?

Thanks