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Lighttpd

By : Bogus

4.3 (7)

Lighttpd

4.3 (7)

By: Bogus

Overview of this book

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

Lighttpd

Credits

Credits

About the Author

About the Author

About the Reviewer

About the Reviewer

Preface

Preface

Free Chapter

Introduction to Lighttpd

Introduction to Lighttpd

Installing Lighttpd

Building Lighttpd using Autotools

Building Lighttpd using CMake

Summary

Configuring and Running Lighttpd

Configuring and Running Lighttpd

Starting Lighttpd by Hand

Other Core Options

Mime Types

Selectors

Rewriting and Redirecting Requests

Including Variables, Files, and Shell-code

Summary

More Virtual Hosting and CGI

More Virtual Hosting and CGI

Extended Virtual Hosting

MySQL based Virtual Hosting

Going Dynamic

CGI with mod_cgi

FastCGI

SCGI

mod_proxy_core and backends

Summary

Downloads and Streams

Downloads and Streams

Core Settings

Traffic Shaping

Showing Directory Contents

Securing Downloads

Streaming Content

Putting it All Together

Summary

Big Brother Lighttpd

Big Brother Lighttpd

Privacy

O Browser, Where Art Thou?

Access Logging

Tracking Users

Other Data Points

Summary

Encryption: SSL

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

Securing Lighttpd

Securing Lighttpd

Barriers to Entry

Evading Denial of Service Attacks

Know Your Foe

Summary

Containing Lighttpd

Containing Lighttpd

Giving up Privileges

Changing Root

Separating the Backend

Summary

Optimizing Lighttpd

Optimizing Lighttpd

Installing http_load

Specific Optimizations

Profiling with gprof

Summary

Migration from Apache

Migration from Apache

Adding Lighttpd to the Mix

Excursion: mod_proxy

Reducing Apache Load

mod_perl, mod_php, and mod_python

.htaccess

Rewriting Rules

WebDAV

Summary

CGI Revisited

CGI Revisited

Ruby on Rails

WordPress

phpMyAdmin

MediaWiki

Trac

AWStats

AjaxTerm

Summary

Using Lua with Lighttpd

Using Lua with Lighttpd

Lua: A small Primer

Useful Lua Libraries

Lua/FastCGI

Running mod_magnet

Example: A Shoutbox

Summary

Writing Lighttpd Modules

Writing Lighttpd Modules

Handling Configuration

Rewriting the Request

Manipulating the Response

Summary

HTTP Status Codes

HTTP Status Codes

Module/Configuration Index

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

Chapter 13. Writing Lighttpd Modules

Lighttpd is built to be small. It also strives to give all the needed functionality for a variety of applications. As different users tend to have different needs, it is only logical that Lighttpd is extensible with modules. To keep this module small, the module interface is quite simple. Modules get the full benefit of the Lighttpd configuration file parser, so they do not need to create their own. This also keeps the configuration syntax for modules consistent.

Modules live directly in the server. They are usually written in C (Lighttpd requires a C binding, which could be done with C++ or other languages, but in practice rarely is), so they are faster than using mod_magnet (which is already pretty fast). The downside is that writing a module is much more tedious and error-prone than writing a Lua script for use with mod_magnet. This brings us to the following rule of thumb:

Note

Do not write a module where a mod_magnet script will do

A mod_magnet script...

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Tech Concepts

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Programming languages

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