[Techtalk] apache2 performance

[Gerhard Meier]

On Tue, Nov 30, 2004 at 10:48:36AM -0500, Kristina Clair wrote:
> I've been reading a bit about Apache2 performance tuning.  I'm
> particularly interested in reducing the memory usage as much as
> possible.

Well, first you should only load modules you are really using.
Run "httpd -l" to find out, which modules are compiled into the
binary. If there are modules you do not use, compile apache
without them.

> I'm running apache2 on redhat 7.3 servers with very heavy http
> traffic.  I'm wondering if it might be wise for me to try to use the
> worker MPM rather than the default prefork.  Does anyone have any
> real-world experience with this?

This depends on what you are hosting. MPM should be ok, for CGI
(with mod_cgid) and static content. If it came to mod_perl or
mod_php I won't use it. mod_perl and mod_php will run in threaded
mode, so all the dependencies of php and perl modules have to be
thread safe, espacially with havy traffic. Also if you use php,
maybe it is better to run Apache 1. See the following link for
more details:

  http://de3.php.net/manual/en/faq.installation.php#faq.installation.apache2

If there is no mod_php and no mod_perl, and no other dependencies
inside apache to other third party software (mod_ldap etc.) MPM
should do fine and safe much memory.

/GM