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Web Server Options for
Linux
As with most types of server, there are several Web servers
available for Linux. These servers range from exotic and specialized programs
to generalist tools. Some programs are small and support just a limited set of options;
others are large packages and are loaded with features. Some of the more
noteworthy Linux Web server options include the following: Apache This Web server ships with all major Linux distributions, and is
the package that's installed by default when you ask for a Web server during
system installation. According to Netcraft (
of the Web's active sites used Apache in March of 2002. For these reasons, this
chapter focuses on Apache. This server is quite full-featured and supports the
usual set of advanced options, such as CGI scripts and SSL security. The main
Apache Web site is http://httpd.apache.org . Roxen This is a full-featured Web server comparable to Apache in many
ways. It features a Web-based configuration interface that may make it
appealing to some new administrators. You can read more about it at
compared to 300KB for Apache, both figures dependent upon compilation options).
It's intended to be quick and efficient. Despite its small size, it supports
CGI scripts, but not SSL security. You can read more about it at
it's a commercial product that sells for $1,700. The Zeus Web site (
very high server loads. Kernel-based Web
servers An entire class of Web server has
sprung up that relies upon specialized Linux kernel features to handle some of
the Web serving. The idea is that the bulk of the job of serving Web pages
involves taking disk files and sending them out a network port. This is a
simple enough task that the kernel can do it with much greater efficiency than
an external program, so various kernel-based Web servers have been developed to
do the job. The upcoming section, "
discusses this approach in more detail. Non-traditional
servers Some products use HTTP to provide functions
that are more specialized than those handled by traditional Web servers. For
instance, the remote administration tools covered in
ports other than the traditional Web server's port 80, but they can be accessed
using Web browsers. This chapter doesn't cover such servers.If you have some particularly exotic
requirements, you may be able to find a Web server to fit the bill; people have
written Web servers for various specialized or just plain strange needs. Doing
a Web search may turn up some useful leads.As a general rule, Apache is a good choice
for a Web server because of its popularity and the fact that it ships with all
major Linux distributions. Small sites, or those concerned with resource use,
might want to look into a slimmer Web server, such as thttpd . If you
simply want to run a low- traffic site that doesn't use Apache's more advanced
features, such an approach might be reasonable if the slimmer server is easy to
install, configure, and use. Because Apache is so common, though, it's usually
the easier choice, despite being far more capable than you might need.Extremely high-performance sites might
benefit from kernel Web server enhancements, such as those provided by kHTTPd. Using
such a server, you can serve more requests on a single computer, or use a
computer with weaker hardware than you might otherwise require. Similarly,
even user-space servers such as thttpd
and Zeus might be able to squeeze more performance out of your hardware. In
many cases, though, the bottleneck in Web server performance is the Internet
connection, not the Web server computer or software. More efficient software
won't help if your site is too popular for your Internet connection. If that's
the case, you'll need to reduce the bandwidth requirements of your Web sites
(say, by reducing graphics), upgrade your Internet connection, or move your
site to a Web hosting or co-location service with better connectivity than you
have locally.If you opt to use a Web server other than Apache, this chapter
may be useful in that some of the capabilities of your server may be similar to
those of Apache, and the configuration features may be similar in a broad
sense. The specifics of how you handle a configuration file will be dissimilar,
however.
