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Installing lighttpd 1.4.22 as static file server running by proxy with Apache 2.2.3

In this tutorial i will show how i have installed my lighttpd to run side by side with my Apache installation.

First of all let me introduce both, Apache i suppose that everyone nows, its one of the most stable, secure and used web server on the market. Lighttpd is growing, lighttpd is getting famous by the his speed, if look for benchmarks in google you will see that . What a lot of webmasters are doing now is let Apache run the script part, the complicated part, and configuring lighttpd as a static file server, a server for .js, .gif, .jpg, .css this type of files, www.gwebtools.com is running this way the website speed had increased a lot.

I am running on CentOS

Installing and configuring lighttpd

1. wget http://www.lighttpd.net/download/lighttpd-1.4.22.tar.gz
2. gunzip lighttpd-1.4.22.tar.gz
3. tar -xvf lighttpd-1.4.22.tar
4. Inside the lighttpd folder run ./configure maybe you get some dependencies errors so you will need to download it with yum install “dependencie-lib”
5. make all && make install
6. if you get no errors still here, type the command lighttpd and you will get some message like this 2009-03-21 09:33:34: (server.c.552) No configuration available. Try using -f option.
7. Now its time to create your lighttpd.conf file, type mkdir /etc/lighttpd, after that inside your lighttpd folder type cp doc/lighttpd.conf /etc/lighttpd/lighttpd.conf
8. Ok, now you have a default conf file, you just need to change the default port of the lighttpd web server.
9. Set server.port = 81, this is necessary because apache already runs on port 80, see the log path to see if they are right for your *nix distribution
10. Set server.document-root = “Your www folder”, in my case /var/www/vhosts/gwebtools.com/httpdocs
11. Now start the lighttpd server running lighttpd -f /etc/lighttpd/lighttpd.conf

Configuring apache to run on proxy mod

1. Enable mod proxy on httpd.conf,
   LoadModule proxy_module modules/mod_proxy.so
   LoadModule proxy_http_module modules/mod_proxy_http.so
   LoadModule proxy_connect_module modules/mod_proxy_connect.so
2. In your virtual host config you need to edit conforming your needs, for this blog.gwebtools.com that is running with wordpress i do the following
   ProxyRequests Off
   ProxyPreserveHost On
   ProxyPass /wp-content http://0.0.0.0:81/wordpress/wp-content
   ProxyPass /wp-includes http://0.0.0.0:81/wordpress/wp-includes
   ProxyPassReverse / http://0.0.0.0:81/
3. Now every request to static files, js, images from my blog, lighttpd will be the server how will attend to the request.
4. Now everything is running fine and faster.

Creating a script file to manage lighttpd process

#!/bin/sh

# Author: Nathaniel Brown
# Date: December 16, 2005
# URL: http://nshb.net/lighttpd-restart-script.html
# Version: 1.0
# License: MIT

#Binary Paths
CAT="/bin/cat"
PS="/bin/ps"
HTTPD="/usr/local/sbin/lighttpd"

# Modifiy this line for each install
PATH="/etc/lighttpd/"
LIGHTTPD_CONF=$PATH"lighttpd.conf"
PIDFILE="/var/run/lighttpd.pid"

PID=0
if [ -e $PIDFILE ]; then
    PID=`$CAT $PIDFILE`
    if [ "x" == "x$PID" ]; then
        PID=0
    fi
fi

case "$1" in
    start)
        if [ 0 -ne $PID ]; then
            running=`$PS --pid $PID | grep $PID`
            if [ $running ]; then
                echo "lighttpd is already running"
                exit 1
            fi
            rm $PIDFILE
            PID=0
        fi
        $HTTPD -f $LIGHTTPD_CONF
        ;;
    stop)
        if [ 0 -eq $PID ]; then
            echo "lighttpd was not running"
            exit 1
        fi
        kill $PID
        tries=""
        while [ -e $PIDFILE ]; do
            if [ "x$tries" == "x.........." ]; then
                break
            fi
            sleep 2
            tries=".$tries"
        done
        if [ -e $PIDFILE ]; then
            echo "lighttpd did not go gentle into that good night, murdering"
            kill -9 $PID
            rm $PIDFILE
        fi
        ;;
    restart)
        $0 stop
        $0 start
        ;;
    reload)
        if [ 0 -eq $PID ]; then
            echo "lighttpd was not running"
        fi
        kill -HUP $PID
        ;;
    status)
       if [ 0 -eq $PID ]; then
            echo "lighttpd is not running"
       fi
       if [ 0 -ne $PID ]; then
            echo "lighttpd (pid $PID) is running..."
       fi
       ;;
    *)
        echo "Usage: "`basename $0`" (start|stop|restart|reload|status)"
        exit 1
        ;;
esac