Site upgrade
Posted by rick Sun, 20 Nov 2005 17:10:00 GMT
This site is now running on lighttpd & fcgi, fronted by Apache running mod_proxy. I had been running a number of sites on this server using simple Apache/FCGI, but I’ve found stability with that combination to be far from ideal. The Apache FCGI linkage seems fairly fragile. Sometimes the Rails controller doesn’t get a chance to fire properly, resulting in HTTP 500 errors; sometimes an FCGI process gets seemingly disconnected and goes into a tailspin, sucking CPU like crazy; and overall Apache/FastCGI really isn’t (“fast”, that is).
Since we’re using Apache 1.3.33 on this FreeBSD server, however, I can’t (without digging around for a patch I’ve yet to actually find, and then risking the rebuild of Apache) have Apache pass the hostname properly back to lighttpd (this is an Apache2 feature). So I’m running a separate lighttpd intance for each Rails site (there are 5 on this server), each on a different port. Less than ideal, but it seems to be working, and fast.
Our CenterNet milestone sites and nightly build sites are using a similar configuration—a subdomain per site. But there we’re fronting with Apache2, and hence only need 1 lighttpd process for the whole enchilada.
If anyone knows how to easily work around this Apache1 + multiple lighttpd on different ports setup issue I’d be pleased to hear it for my personal sites.
