Cherokee Web Server

Seems to have been in Ubuntu for a long time:

http://packages.ubuntu.com/search?keywords=cherokee

so the command would be:

sudo apt-get install cherokee

James

Well, both the Hardy and Intrepid packages are 2 years old. Even the Jaunty package is not up-to-date.

I'll try to compile it from source but I just wanted get some advices about how to do that with optimal performance.

Thanks anyway!

Ok I've just found up-to-date packages on launchpad. I'll try it out and write about my experiences in case anyone ever needs it.

https://launchpad.net/~cherokee-webserver/+archive

Update after a day-long trial&error with Cherokee:

The server itself compiles correctly, leaving configure parameters at the defaults doesn't do much harm. Binding PHP into it was also relatively easy.

The problem started when I wanted to use additional php modules. I've tried both GD and APC, no luck. They got installed correctly, but the php-cgi installation doesn't seem to recognize them. Modifying /etc/php5/cgi/php.ini with "extension=gdi.so" (or the lines for APC) was also a dead end.

At this point I've stopped digging into this. If anyone knows how to fix this, feel free to share.

@dcelasun:

the php-cgi installation doesn't seem to recognize them. Modifying /etc/php5/php-cli/php.ini with "extension=gdi.so" (or the lines for APC) was also a dead end.

Are you editing the wrong file or was that just a typo? If you want to enables PHP modules with CGI/FastCGI, you need to edit /etc/php5/cgi/php.ini

Oops, sorry that was a typo. Thanks for pointing that out, I've corrected the original post.

@hybinet:

Are you editing the wrong file or was that just a typo? If you want to enables PHP modules with CGI/FastCGI, you need to edit /etc/php5/cgi/php.ini

That was such a pain when I was configuring my php.ini for lighttpd. I had to run a phpinfo to figure out where it was being read from. They really need to go back to just using /etc/phpV/php.ini again.

How is the Cherokee web server working out? I've read lots of good things about it, but I'm a lighttpd fan.

Well, APC finally seems to be working (sort of) with Cherokee, still no luck with GD though. Plus I'm missing the mod_rewrite functionality of Apache. Although URL rewriting with regex is supported, the functionality is not even close to what Apache offers.

I'll keep experimenting with Cherokee though. If I can get it fully functional I'll run my own benchmarks and see if it's really that better than the competition.

So, I gotta ask - please don't take this the wrong way, but I truly am curious: Why Cherokee and not Apache? Personally, I hadn't ever heard of Cherokee before, so I know nothing about it.

I just ask because Apache is readily available, and you seem to be familiar with it - I'm willing to bet you could have it up, running and tuned within a half day.

Well, I do know my way around with Apache. But I still like to experiment. I've ran into Cherokee a few months ago and the benchmarks on their site seemed impressing. I'm now trying to find out if their claims are true.

Again, I'm testing it just of curiosity. I really haven't tested it that throughly though, I'm still far away from even considering a switch to Cherokee.

Thanks for the reply - do post your results here if you don't mind. I'd be interested in seeing the results.

Sure, it'll be my pleasure. I'll post back when I make some significant progress.

You should take the benchmarks on their web page with a grain of salt.

A commenter on the blog that posted the 0.10.0 benchmarks originally pointed out that e.g. the nginx configuration is far from optimal (only one process serving requests).