Lighttpd

Andre Bogus

• Publisher: Packt Publishing
• Year: 2008
• eBook ISBN: 9781847192103
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Computer Science
• Subtopic: Information Technology
• Index: Computer Science

In Detail

Lighttpd is a secure, flexible, and most importantly, light web server designed and optimized for high performance environments. It is open-source and licensed under the revised BSD license. Its event-driven architecture optimized for a large number of parallel connections, its advanced features (FastCGI, CGI, Auth, Output Compression, URL Rewriting, and many more), and its small memory footprint compared to other web servers, make Lighttpd the perfect server software for every web server that suffers load problems or for serving static media separately from dynamic content.

Lighttpd supports the FastCGI, SCGI, and CGI interfaces to external programs, permitting web applications written in any programming language to be used with this server. Excellent performance for PHP, a particularly popular language, has received special attention. Additionally, Lighttpd has become popular within the Ruby on Rails community.

This is your fast guide to getting started and getting inside the Lighttpd web server. Written from a developer's perspective, this book helps you understand Lighttpd, and get it set up as securely and quickly as possible.

Who this book is for

This book is for System Administrators or Web Developers seeking a lean deployment platform for web applications or who want to switch to a "lighter" web server than Apache.

Lighttpd

Andre Bogus

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Table of Contents

Lighttpd

Credits

About the Author

About the Reviewer

Preface

What This Book Covers

What You Need For this Book

Who is This Book For

Conventions

Reader Feedback

Customer Support

Downloading the Example Code for the Book

Errata

Piracy

Questions

1. Introduction to Lighttpd

Installing Lighttpd

Building Lighttpd using Autotools

Building Lighttpd using CMake

Summary

2. Configuring and Running Lighttpd

Starting Lighttpd by Hand

Other Core Options

Mime Types

Selectors

Excursion: Regular Expressions

Play it Again, Sam

Are You There?

Decisions, Decisions

Group and Capture

Lucky Escape

Rewriting and Redirecting Requests

Including Variables, Files, and Shell-code

Summary

3. More Virtual Hosting and CGI

Extended Virtual Hosting

MySQL based Virtual Hosting

Installing MySQL

Bringing MySQL and mod_mysqlvhost Together

Going Dynamic

CGI with mod_cgi

FastCGI

SCGI

mod_proxy_core and backends

Summary

4. Downloads and Streams

Core Settings

Traffic Shaping

Showing Directory Contents

Securing Downloads

Streaming Content

Putting it All Together

Summary

5. Big Brother Lighttpd

Privacy

O Browser, Where Art Thou?

Access Logging

Tracking Users

Other Data Points

Summary

6. Encryption: SSL

Self-Signed Keys

Being our own Certificate Authority

Obtaining a Key Pair from a Third-Party Supplier

Configuring Lighttpd to use SSL

Summary

7. Securing Lighttpd

Barriers to Entry

Evading Denial of Service Attacks

Setting up Logrotate

Know Your Foe

RRDtool

Grepping the Logs

Summary

8. Containing Lighttpd

Giving up Privileges

Changing Root

Separating the Backend

Summary

9. Optimizing Lighttpd

Installing http_load

Running http_load Tests

Specific Optimizations

Example: Caching with mod_magnet

Measuring System Load

Profiling with gprof

Load Testing our Profiling Build

Summary

10. Migration from Apache

Adding Lighttpd to the Mix

Excursion: mod_proxy

Reducing Apache Load

mod_perl, mod_php, and mod_python

.htaccess

.htaccess and PHP

Rewriting Rules

WebDAV

Summary

11. CGI Revisited

Ruby on Rails

WordPress

phpMyAdmin

MediaWiki

Trac

AWStats

AjaxTerm

Summary

12. Using Lua with Lighttpd

Lua: A small Primer

Useful Lua Libraries

Lua/FastCGI

Installing Lua/FastCGI

GET and POST Requests

Looking at the Cache

Running mod_magnet

Example: A Shoutbox

Summary

13. Writing Lighttpd Modules

Handling Configuration

Rewriting the Request

Manipulating the Response

Summary

A. HTTP Status Codes

B. Module/Configuration Index

Internal

mod_access

mod_accesslog

mod_alias

mod_auth

mod_cgi

mod_cml

mod_chunked

mod_compress

mod_deflate

mod_dirlisting

mod_evasive

mod_evhost

mod_expire

mod_fastcgi

mod_flv_streaming

mod_indexfile

mod_magnet

mod_proxy

mod_proxy_core

mod_redirect

mod_rewrite

mod_rrdtool

mod_scgi

mod_secure_download

mod_setenv

mod_simple_vhost

mod_sql_vhost_core, mod_mysql_vhost

mod_ssi

mod_staticfile

mod_status

mod_trigger_b4_dl

mod_uploadprogress

mod_userdir

mod_usertrack

mod_webdav

Index

Lighttpd

Copyright © 2008 Packt Publishing

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews.

Every effort has been made in the preparation of this book to ensure the accuracy of the information presented. However, the information contained in this book is sold without warranty, either express or implied. Neither the author, Packt Publishing, nor its dealers or distributors will be held liable for any damages caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by this book.

Packt Publishing has endeavored to provide trademark information about all the companies and products mentioned in this book by the appropriate use of capitals. However, Packt Publishing cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information.

First published: October 2008

Production Reference: 1151008

Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.

32 Lincoln Road

Olton

Birmingham, B27 6PA, UK.

ISBN 978-1-847192-10-3

www.packtpub.com

Cover Image by Vinayak Chittar (<[email protected]>)

Credits

Author

Andre Bogus

Reviewer

Peter Lavetsky

Development Editor

Swapna V. Verlekar

Technical Editors

Dhiraj Chandiramani

Rasika Sathe

Editorial Team Leader

Akshara Aware

Project Manager

Abhijeet Deobhakta

Project Coordinator

Abhijeet Deobhakta

Indexer

Monica Ajmera

Proofreader

Claire Lane

Production Coordinator

Shantanu Zagade

Cover Work

Shantanu Zagade

About the Author

Andre Bogus is a musician turned programmer. He has worked in different jobs from voice acting to programming to teaching to managing software projects. At the moment he works as a consultant and implementer for KOGIT GmbH, an Identity Management company based in Germany.

He found Lightt...

Table of contents

• Lighttpd