[horde] Horde with Lighttpd

Rick Romero rick at havokmon.com
Fri Mar 19 12:58:53 UTC 2010


I run Horde with lighttpd.

Things I've discovered about lighttpd, some related to Horde, some not:

Pros:
    1. Seemed a little faster initially, but I've since added memcache  
and imapproxy, which have given an even greater speed boost.
    2. sub-domains are dead simple. You can configure a domains/  
directory, then list each hostname below:  domains/havokmon.com  
domains/www.havokmon.com domains/private.havokmon.com  and no restart  
or config edit is required.

Cons.
    1. I used to use gzip within Apache, and disabled it within the  
apps that natively supported it.  With lighttpd I either needed to  
manually add gzip to my php scripts, or enable it in the application  
(Horde does provide that)
    2. lighttpd is unforgiving about php format.  Your php must start  
and end your files 'correctly'.  This was fine for Horde, but some  
other php scripts I had to manually fix.
    3. I am unable to get lighttpd to allow webdav 'safely' for turba  
writes.  webdav appears to be all or nothing, and I don't see a way to  
just enable the portion needed for writing back turba for addressbook  
sync.
    4. Even after tweaking workers, I still get random HTTP '500'  
errors.  Some issue with php-cgi not being recycled or something.

That's all I have off the top of my head.

If I could do the subdomain trick with Apache, I'd probably go back to it.

Rick

Quoting lst_hoe02 at kwsoft.de:

> Hello
>
> from time to time there are rumors on the list that replacing Apache  
>  with Lighttpd as basis for Horde will gain speed and/or  
> improvements  regarding memory/CPU usage.
> As far as i can see the main differences are that Lighttpd will use   
> threading and a fixed set of workers for scripts like PHP which  
> should  lead to less overhead and maybe faster operation.
>
> What i have not found out is the following:
> - Do PHP accelerators work with Lighttpd?
> - Is there any "succes-story" or How-To regarding Horde/Lighttpd
> - What are the possible drawbacks for using Lighttpd
>
> Thanks for any feedback on this
>
> Andreas
>
>




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