Introduction

Lighttpd (pronounced “lighty”) is an open-source web server optimized for speed-critical environments while remaining standards-compliant, secure and flexible.[citation needed] It was originally written by Jan Kneschke as a proof-of-concept of the c10k problem – how to handle 10,000 connections in parallel on one server, but has gained worldwide popularity. lighttpd supports the FastCGI, SCGI and CGI interfaces to external programs, permitting web applications written in any programming language to be used with the server. As a particularly popular language, PHP performance has received special attention. Lighttpd’s FastCGI can be configured to support PHP with opcode caches (like APC) properly and efficiently. Additionally, it has received attention from its popularity within the Python, Perl, Ruby and Lua communities.

Prerequisties

• No prior experience with lighttpd is presumed.

Course Content

1. Introduction

2. Building lighttpd

• Installing lighttpd
• Different approaches for building lighttpd

3. Configuring and running lighttpd

• Starting lighttpd by hand
• Other core options
• MIME types
• Selectors
• Will include regular expression tutorial if needed
• Rewriting and redirecting requests
• Including variables, files, and shell code

4. More virtual hosting and CGI

• Extended virtual hosting
• MySQL-based virtual hosting
• Going dynamic
• CGI with mod_cgi
• FastCGI and or SCGI (as desired)
• mod_proxy_core and backends

5. Downloads and streams

• Core settings
• Traffic shaping
• Securing downloads
• Streaming content

6. Access logging and user tracking

• Access logging
• Tracking users

7. SSL

• Fundamentals of SSL
• Self-signed certificates (for test) versus “real” certificates from a CA
• Configuring lighttpd to use SSL
• Configuring lighttpd to require SSL for access to a given resource

8. Securing lighttpd

• Barriers to entry
• Evading denial of service attacks
• RRDtool
• Grepping the logs for signs of attack

9. Containing lighttpd

• Giving up privileges
• Changing root

10. Optimizing lighttpd

• Installing http_load
• Caching with mod_magnet (your preferred OS must support the Lua language)
• Measuring system load
• Profiling with gprof

11. Migration from Apache

• Adding lighttpd to the mix
• mod_proxy
• Reducing Apache load
• mod_perl, mod_php, and mod_python
• .htaccess
• Rewriting rules

12.CGI revisited (we typically cover just selected sections of this)

• Integration with Ruby on Rails
• Installing apps of your choice (WordPress, phpMyAdmin, MediaWiki, etc.)

13.Using Lua with lighttpd (if desired)

• Lua primer
• Useful Lua libraries
• Lua with FastCGI
• Running mod_magnet