Monday 24 April 2006 7:22:13 am

It's a nice approach, but I'm not sure how much you'd really gain by it in ezp's case:

If you turn on debug mode, you'll see that, usually, most of the load is not SQL queries but rather template processing which is better optimized with sensible caching inside that (ez does it, but you can optimize a lot by hand). It is also relatively easy to spread ez to different boxes (compared to a DB, anyway).

Plus for big, relatively static sites there's always the static page cache which can't be otherwise beaten, at all (except by replacing Apache with something faster).

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Monday 01 May 2006 9:48:21 am

I do not think lighthttpd supports fancy features eZ requires to work properly with it

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Thursday 04 May 2006 1:49:07 pm

A friend of mine did benchmarks with lighttpd and php fastcgi vs Apache with mod_php for some generic scripts. Lighttpd was slightly to a LOT faster but I don't think ez currently works in php fastcgi mode.

But for busy sites, it would definitely be worth considering to put static content such as images on lighttpd. I know the admin of one those party pictures sites and he says for static serving of pictures etc, it's much much faster.

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Friday 05 May 2006 5:28:14 am

@Vitaly

That sounds really great !

You have all the features from ez (including images resizing, char encoding and the al) ?

Did you run proper benchmark or is that just an impression that it runs faster ?

X+

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Saturday 06 May 2006 12:20:59 pm

@Xavier Dutoit

I did no benchmarks. It's my opinion, based on running unix "top" utility. With apache + mod_php the average load was 4-5. With nginx + FCGI the average load was about 2-3.

Futhermore, with apache + mod_php server could go to infinit swapping after viewcache reset. For example, you can get 20 requests to the same page (without cache). That causes 20 (!) processes to build cache for the single page. With apache you can really go out of resources. I had such situation several times.

About compatibility - yes, everything works for me, I didn't find any differences at all.

@Gabriel Ambuehl

You are almost right. But don't forget, that I've changes webserver software too. For example nginx can hold 10 000 keepalive connections and require only 2.5 mb memory for it.

Changing only php mode will help a lot, but will not completely solve the problem. You'd better to change the webserver too. Apache makes additional process for every new keepalive connection. That require too many memory.

The rude model of server overload can be decribed with this steps:

1. You get too many requests, requiring to rebult cache
2. CPU goes down :)
3. Too many copies of apache
4. Lack of memory
5. Swapping (and even more load to CPU)
6. Lack of swapping space (sometime)
7. bye-bye :)

FCGI will help you with (2), but will not help with (3,4). To resolve (3,4) you must change apache to nginx, lighttpd, zeus and so on.

@ALL

Just a notice. If you use static cache, and CPU load is less than 1, then you don't need such uprgade. That helps only with peak loads. If you don't youse static cache, and CPU load can be >1, then software upgrade can give a great help.

In situiation, when viewcache is already build, nginx+FCGI will not get you advantage in speed, but anyway, it will save a lot of memory. You will be able to give more memory for mysql, for example, instead of wasting memory for apache+mod_php

Monday 08 May 2006 9:25:45 pm

Do use lighttpd then. You'll get the similar results, as desribed above.

Tuesday 09 May 2006 6:58:18 pm

Xavier,

I use nginx, not lighttpd, and those rewrite rules have different syntax. The only advice is to read documentation and support forum for lighttpd.

Wednesday 10 May 2006 11:17:57 am

@Vitaly

Have you tried to put together php4.3 and php4.4 on the same server ? If this is the case, it would be a good reason to try your solution, it'd be so much easier for the migration...

X+

http://www.sydesy.com

Thursday 11 May 2006 1:37:52 am

@Vitaly,

Thanks for your help and valuable advices.

X+

http://www.sydesy.com

Friday 12 May 2006 3:19:43 am

hm... to be honest, I don't use embedded search at all. I do use mnogosearch engine with php frontend. It's more suitable for my needs. EZ version is 3.7.5.

May be, I don't use all EZ features, but I didn't noticed any problems with FCGI.

Probably, the point is not in EZ, but in lighttpd config. I've spent 1 week to make nginx work right with my requirements. May be, you just need a more time :) . You could miss setup for some FCGI variables, for example.

It would be interesting to get your opinion about server load with lighttpd + FCGI. My guess - at least 2 times, if it was above 1 before upgrade.

The other solution is to setup lighttpd as frontend, for static content and keepalive support. And apache will be at backend, only for php processing, and with keepalive off. That will help too, but not as good as "clear" lighttpd without apache at all.