mathie's bits

The difference between serving image from MySQL & from a static file is huge so there is clearly no question which one is better in term of performance.

ab -n 1000 -c 10 25131.php
Requests per second:    66.33 [#/sec] (mean)
ab -n 1000 -c 10 25131.gif
Requests per second:    632.39 [#/sec] (mean)

Install the require RPMs (php, php-mysql, php-eAccelerator). For Fedora, use yum (lighttpd and lighttpd-fastcgi). For CentOS and other distros that do not include lighttpd in their repository, use DAG repository

Find out the path to php-cgi and whether it supports fastcgi (should show cgi-fcgi)

<br /> $ php-cgi -v<br /> PHP 5.0.4 (cgi-fcgi) (built: Nov 8 2005 08:25:54)<br /> Copyright (c) 1997-2004 The PHP Group<br /> Zend Engine v2.0.4-dev, Copyright (c) 1998-2004 Zend Technologies<br /> with eAccelerator v0.9.4, Copyright (c) 2004-2005 eAccelerator, by eAccelerator<br />

Configure a light weight lighttpd:
<br /> # lighttpd configuration file<br /> # @author: Son Nguyen<br /> # @date: 6/26/2006</p> <p>server.modules = (“mod_fastcgi”)<br /> server.document-root = “/home/www/”<br /> server.max-keep-alive-requests = 0<br /> server.max-fds = 2048<br /> server.port = 80</p> <p>server.errorlog = “/var/log/lighttpd/error_log”<br /> server.tag = “lighttpd”<br /> server.username = “lighttpd”<br /> server.groupname = “lighttpd”<br /> server.pid-file = “/var/run/lighttpd.pid”</p> <p>#### fastcgi module<br /> fastcgi.server = (“.php”=>(“localhost”=>(“socket”=>”/tmp/php-fastcgi.socket”,”bin-path”=>”/usr/bin/php-cgi”)))</p> <p># files to check for if …/ is requested<br /> index-file.names = (“index.php”,”index.html”,”index.htm”,”default.htm”)</p> <p># which extensions should not be handle via static-file transfer<br /> # .php, .pl, .fcgi are most often handled by mod_fastcgi or mod_cgi<br /> static-file.exclude-extensions = ( “.php”, “.pl”, “.fcgi” )</p> <p># mimetype mapping<br /> mimetype.assign = (<br /> “.rpm” => “application/x-rpm”,<br /> “.pdf” => “application/pdf”,<br /> “.sig” => “application/pgp-signature”,<br /> “.spl” => “application/futuresplash”,<br /> “.class” => “application/octet-stream”,<br /> “.ps” => “application/postscript”,<br /> “.torrent” => “application/x-bittorrent”,<br /> “.dvi” => “application/x-dvi”,<br /> “.gz” => “application/x-gzip”,<br /> “.pac” => “application/x-ns-proxy-autoconfig”,<br /> “.swf” => “application/x-shockwave-flash”,<br /> “.tar.gz” => “application/x-tgz”,<br /> “.tgz” => “application/x-tgz”,<br /> “.tar” => “application/x-tar”,<br /> “.zip” => “application/zip”,<br /> “.mp3” => “audio/mpeg”,<br /> “.m3u” => “audio/x-mpegurl”,<br /> “.wma” => “audio/x-ms-wma”,<br /> “.wax” => “audio/x-ms-wax”,<br /> “.ogg” => “application/ogg”,<br /> “.wav” => “audio/x-wav”,<br /> “.gif” => “image/gif”,<br /> “.jpg” => “image/jpeg”,<br /> “.jpeg” => “image/jpeg”,<br /> “.png” => “image/png”,<br /> “.xbm” => “image/x-xbitmap”,<br /> “.xpm” => “image/x-xpixmap”,<br /> “.xwd” => “image/x-xwindowdump”,<br /> “.css” => “text/css”,<br /> “.html” => “text/html”,<br /> “.htm” => “text/html”,<br /> “.js” => “text/javascript”,<br /> “.asc” => “text/plain”,<br /> “.c” => “text/plain”,<br /> “.cpp” => “text/plain”,<br /> “.log” => “text/plain”,<br /> “.conf” => “text/plain”,<br /> “.text” => “text/plain”,<br /> “.txt” => “text/plain”,<br /> “.dtd” => “text/xml”,<br /> “.xml” => “text/xml”,<br /> “.mpeg” => “video/mpeg”,<br /> “.mpg” => “video/mpeg”,<br /> “.mov” => “video/quicktime”,<br /> “.qt” => “video/quicktime”,<br /> “.avi” => “video/x-msvideo”,<br /> “.asf” => “video/x-ms-asf”,<br /> “.asx” => “video/x-ms-asf”,<br /> “.wmv” => “video/x-ms-wmv”,<br /> “.bz2” => “application/x-bzip”,<br /> “.tbz” => “application/x-bzip-compressed-tar”,<br /> “.tar.bz2” => “application/x-bzip-compressed-tar”<br /> )<br />

Might need to switch from httpd to lighttpd

# switch from httpd to lighttpd
service httpd stop
service lighttpd start
chkconfig --list httpd
chkconfig lighttpd on
chkconfig httpd off
chkconfig --list httpd
chkconfig --list lighttpd

Can also run both httpd and lighttpd together on the same server (use two different ports, eg: 80 & 81, don’t forget to open the new port in the firewall) for testing/benchmarking or development purposes.

Initial benchmark: a 10-15% improvement on serving dynamic PHP/MySQL pages. Static files are supposed to be much faster. lighttpd is very stable (loadavg is maintained at about 3-4) with higher concurrency levels while Apache might increase loadavg to over 10+

Great kudos to the lighttpd developers for bringing us a fast, light webserver. Fly Light!

Google Earth recently released version 4 (beta) and also it supports higher resolutions maps for Vietnam metros (like Saigon, Hanoi, and other cities). Great kudos for them. Love those maps, now I see things I never know about Saigon before.

Using myisamchk sometime requires shutting down MySQL server and that’s not very easy in certain situation. This shell script accepts a database name from input and gets all table names and runs a SQL query against these tables. Currently, it only optimizes all the tables and could be expanded to do a lot more. OPTIMIZE does a lot more, an all-in-one solution (for MyISAM tables: repair, sort index, update stats). Enjoy!

<br /> #!/bin/sh</p> <p># this shell script finds all the tables for a database and run a command against it<br /> # @date 6/14/2006<br /> # @author Son Nguyen</p> <p>DBNAME=$2</p> <p>printUsage() {<br /> echo “Usage: $0″<br /> echo ” –optimize <tablename>”<br /> return<br /> }</p> <p>doAllTables() {<br /> # get the table names<br /> TABLENAMES=`mysql -D $DBNAME -e “SHOW TABLES\G;”|grep ‘Tables_in_’|sed -n ‘s/.*Tables_in_.*: \([_0-9A-Za-z]*\).*/\1/p’`</p> <p> # loop through the tables and optimize them<br /> for TABLENAME in $TABLENAMES<br /> do<br /> mysql -D $DBNAME -e “OPTIMIZE TABLE $TABLENAME;”<br /> done<br /> }</p> <p>if [ $# -eq 0 ] ; then<br /> printUsage<br /> exit 1<br /> fi</p> <p>case $1 in<br /> –optimize) doAllTables;;<br /> –help) printUsage; exit 1;;<br /> *) printUsage; exit 1;;<br /> esac</p> <p>

Sample Usage:
<br /> root@s# ./mysql_optimize.sh –optimize abc<br /> +——————+———-+———-+———-+<br /> | Table | Op | Msg_type | Msg_text |<br /> +——————+———-+———-+———-+<br /> | abc.def | optimize | status | OK |<br /> +——————+———-+———-+———-+<br />

If you try to restart APF and somehow got this message:

Unable to load iptables module (ipt_state), aborting.

change this in the conf.apf

SET_MONOKERN="0" change to "1"

Director server needs at least 2 IP addresses, one for the Virtual IP and one for other things. With just one, SSH seems to forward to the other machine among other unexpected behaviors.

Real/Worker server needs just one IP address each. Kernel 2.6.x seems to have no problem with the ARP problem and no need to patch anything.