Lighttpd AND apache on the same server

apache-2.2lighttpdport

I've been thinking about running lighttpd for static content, but I'd rather not throw down the couple extra bucks to run the second box. Is it possible (and this is me going out on a limb) to run Apache on port 80 and lighttpd on another port (say, 81)? I know it would be better to just put it on another box, but I'm looking to do this on the cheap if possible.

Thanks

Best Answer

Changing the port that lighttpd listens on is pretty staightforward. Just change the "server.port" directive in "lighttpd.conf" (or wherever your OS decides to put the config for lighttpd).

Are you planning on adding a ":81" to all the URLs that refer to the lighttpd content?

If not, you should think about running lighttpd on port 80, moving Apache to another port, and proxying access to Apache through lighttpd. As has been discused on Server Fault already, running lighttpd as the proxy is preferred since it's "lighter weight" than Apache.

Of course, lighttpd isn't the only show in town. Some comparison between lighttpd, apache, and nginx has been the topic of conversation over at Stack Overflow. I don't use lighttpd and I don't know if the memory leak issues that I've seen mentioned in a couple of places have been addressed or not.

Related Solutions

How to prevent another process from listening on the same port as Apache

Listeners don't really just bind to a port--they bind to an address and a port. It could be that apache is binding to 0.0.0.0:8080 (sometimes written *:8080), while tomcat is binding to port 8080 on a specific interface. In that case, both binds could coexist, and the interface-specific bind would take precedence over the wildcard bind. That may be what's happening to you.

The simplest fix would be to have apache do an interface-specific bind rather than (or in addition to) doing a wildcard bind.

In short, look for the Listen lines in your apache configuration. If you see a line like:

Listen 8080

Listen 0.0.0.0:8080

Add another line like:

Listen 1.2.3.4:8080

where 1.2.3.4 is the host's IP address.

Nginx – lighttpd, ngingx, fastcgi, static content, What are they, and when do you need them

lighttpd and ngingx

Correct, these are HTTP daemons that do the same job as Apache, but are generally geared to different kinds of content serving. I don't know much about them (I'm an Apache/IIS man myself), so I don't know why you would choose one over the other. I'm sure there's lots of questions on serverfault about why you would though.

For more information, try here or here or here or here or here.

FastCGI / CGI

CGI = Common Gateway Interface, and it was most commonly used to execute Perl and C scripts back in the 90's (or any pre-processor). Please correct me if I'm wrong about that. PHP also ships as a CGI module, and it's just an (old fashioned and slow) way of exposing the PHP engine to the HTTP daemon.

FastCGI = a modern implementation of CGI, which is apparently quite good. It's an alternative to ISAPI plugins for IIS and Apache modules.

Static Content

There is absolutally no reason to set up a 2nd server for serving static content. If you're serving images, it's usually a good practice to have a 2nd subdomain to serve your images from, as this means that useless information like Cookies are not sent with the IMG requests. The usefulness of this really depends on your expected traffic levels. You should be able to configure this in Plesk.