Work has started on the next generation of Apache web server

http://www.h-online.com/open/news/item/Work-has-started-on-the-next-generation-of-Apache-1203465.html

by Tsiolkovsky • 15 years ago

89 35 15 years ago

powertower5• 15 years ago

The 2.3 branch is a testing branch (that was alpha before 2.3.11, now is beta after 2.3.11).

What we will see is 2.4 (general/public release). And it won't really be stable / product-ready until about 6 months after: 2.4.8.

http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.3/new_features_2_4.html

http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.3/developer/new_api_2_4.html

The MPM for Windows is really great, it takes full advantage of the threaded nature of processes on Windows ... You can spin up 100s of threads in 1 process without much of an impact and have each thread do 1 connection (with a low 1 or 2 seconds keepalive to keep the client).

I'm mostly interested in Apache on Windows and have toyed around with the idea of including v2.3 in my WAMP distribution ( http://www.devside.net/server/webdeveloper ) in the experimental branch, with also some MySQL replacements such as MariaDB and Drizzle.

bnoordhuis4• 15 years ago

Apache hacker here. AMA.

powertower5• 15 years ago

What type of setup do you use to analyze, debug, and follow the code?

Any tips on getting started with module development?

brianm3• 15 years ago

Another apache hacker answering :-)

I use emacs and gdb to muck around the code. Apache has a lot of backwards compat warts with regard to which header files define things, unfortunately, but grep (or ack) and ctags will get you around.

The best way (by far) to learn about module hackery is with Nick Kew's book, http://www.amazon.com/Apache-Modules-Book-Application-Develo...

bnoordhuis4• 15 years ago

Another vote for Nick Kew's book. He is a regular poster on the modules-dev mailing list[1], by the way.

`httpd -X` and `gdb httpd $(pidof httpd)` are a great help when debugging.

[1] http://mail-archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/httpd-modules-dev/

kristofferR• 15 years ago

Why is apache so slow compared to Nginx, Cherokee, Lighttpd and many other web server softwares?

powertower5• 15 years ago

Mostly due to two reasons:

0) People don't know how to use PHP with it: module or fastcgi; and which MPM to use here.

1) People don't know how to configure the MPM setting to allow Apache full use of server resources (without under-utilizing or over-utilizing).

2) Apache is a full / well-rounded web server application... It's not a specialty server (ex: static content mostly) that can exclude this and that and only provide 1 feature to excel at. Other servers are stripped down compared to Apache.

* Not the AMA guy (nor an Apache hacker guy), buy have a little known WAMP distribution (called WampDeveloper, used to be Web.Developer Server Suite) since 2003 with over 250,000 unique ip downloads between 2003-2006 (have stopped counting), and have worked on 1000s of issues for users and clients since the start.

bnoordhuis4• 15 years ago

Different design goals. Apache is meant to be robust, extensible and portable.

* Robust: that's reflected in its internal API that makes it near impossible to leak resources.

* Extensible: witness the gazillion modules out there.

* Portable: compiles and runs on very exotic or outdated systems. SCO, IRIX, Digital UNIX, VMS, the list goes on.

nginx and such were designed from the ground up with performance in mind - and with success - but the trade-off is a lack of portability and an API that is much harder to program to.

getsat3• 15 years ago

Preforked and threaded blocking IO consumes far more resources than event-driven non-blocking network IO. Process/thread stacks consume a significant amount of memory. This is why nginx ruins Apache at almost anything at scale (especially reverse proxying). Apache falls over while consuming grandiose amounts of memory in the low millions of connections per day while nginx can easily handle 10mm connections per day on a single core machine with 256mb ram. It's ridiculous.

On the other hand, for long-lived connections, you're better off using blocking IO since it's more efficient. Most web traffic is not long-lived, though. See Paul's interesting article on NIO vs IO performance:

http://mailinator.blogspot.com/2008/02/kill-myth-please-nio-...

http://www.mailinator.com/tymaPaulMultithreaded.pdf

And don't forget about Slowloris. If you see your competition using Apache, you really don't need to worry. :)

Disclaimer: I have nothing personal against Apache and used it for six years or so. I've just moved on to better software. If it works for you, that's great.

mthomas• 15 years ago

Are there any significant barriers to use the event MPM as it stands in the 2.2.

Does it fall back to worker when its used under SSL?

bnoordhuis4• 15 years ago

No. The main problem the event MPM addresses is HTTP keep-alive.

With pre-fork and threaded, every connection takes up a process or thread. This sucks for keep-alive because it can take a while before the client issues the next request.

The event MPM puts that idle connection in a kqueue/epoll/etc. pollset and recycles the process/thread for another request.

It's a conceptually simple change but it has some profound performance implications.

brianm3• 15 years ago

In 2.2, the event mpm doesn't support ssl, but in 2.3/2.4 it does support ssl.

In fact, IIRC, if you are using apche as a reverse proxy (mod_proxy) the event mpm should become the standard as it will detach the worker thread both for keepalive on the front end, and when waiting on response from the backend.

saurik3• 15 years ago

As a single datapoint, I run a site that handles many billions (this is not rhetorical or an exaggeration) of hits per month using mpm_event: I consider it the only sane/stable way of configuring Apache.

pwpwp• 15 years ago

Anything new on Waka?

IgorPartola2• 15 years ago

Will apache support Google's SPDY at some point? Also, how much is having to support all the legacy platforms slowing down development of new features?

powertower5• 15 years ago

http://code.google.com/p/mod-spdy/

It already has had support since the start (though non-ASF)...

It would be unwise to release a new protocol without releasing a proof-of-concept tie-in for an already existing web server, unless you want the project to be DOA.

lukifer• 15 years ago

Any plans for native support of WebSockets?

IgorPartola2• 15 years ago

Does this mean that apache2 + the Lua support are going to be the next node.js? On a more serious note, this is super-exciting.

compay• 15 years ago

If you're interested in something like Node.js for Lua, check out Ignacio Burgueño's LuaNode.

https://github.com/ignacio/LuaNode

justincormack• 15 years ago

Interesting now lighttpd, nginx and apache are all going to have some degree of integration of Lua in request processing. Its really useful having a real programming language built right in.

brianm3• 15 years ago

Agreed, and lua is so nice to embed that it makes it easy. The only thing that compares is tcl, and, well... Yeah, go lua!

sunkencity• 15 years ago

One of the things that impresses me the most with apache httpd (except for stability and configurability) is the amazing level of integration with perl, not much of a perl hacker myself, but I've done a little development of C stuff for apache, and from what I can see all of the C api is also accessible from mod_perl.

megaman821• 15 years ago

Apache has a lot of distance to make up. Nginx with PHP-FPM and uWSGI are very fast and light on the memory. I also save time with my setup by not having to configure both Nginx and Apache (since Apache is way too slow to serve static content).

Work has started on the next generation of Apache web server

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