Lighttpd
Contents
Lighttpd
Lighttpd (pronounced "lighty") is a free and open-source web server known for its speed, security, flexibility, and compliance with web standards. It is designed to be lightweight and efficient, making it a popular choice for high-performance environments and embedded systems. Pulsed Media is using Lighttpd in their seedboxes to support user-friendly GUI
History
Lighttpd was initially released in March 2003 by Jan Kneschke. It was developed to address the need for a web server that could handle a large number of connections with minimal resource usage, especially for high-traffic websites.
Features
Lighttpd boasts a range of features that contribute to its efficiency and performance:
- Low CPU and Memory Usage: Optimized for speed and minimal resource consumption.
- FastCGI, SCGI, and CGI Support: Enables efficient execution of dynamic content through various interfaces.
- mod_rewrite: URL rewriting engine for clean and user-friendly URLs.
- TLS/SSL Support: Secure communication over HTTPS.
- Authentication: Supports various authentication methods, including HTTP basic and digest authentication.
- Server-Side Includes (SSI): For dynamically generating content on the server.
- Virtual Hosting: Allows hosting multiple websites on a single server instance.
- Load Balancing: Can distribute incoming requests across multiple backend servers.
- Output Compression (mod_compress): Reduces bandwidth usage by compressing content.
- Pipelined Requests: Improves performance by allowing multiple requests to be sent over a single connection.
- Chroot Support: Enhances security by confining the server process to a specific directory.
- Event-Driven Architecture: Utilizes a non-blocking I/O model for efficient handling of concurrent connections.
Use Cases
Due to its performance characteristics, Lighttpd is often used in the following scenarios:
- High-traffic websites and web applications.
- Embedded systems and devices with limited resources.
- As a reverse proxy or load balancer.
- Content delivery networks (CDNs).
- Static file serving.
Configuration
Lighttpd's configuration is managed through a simple and clear configuration file, typically `lighttpd.conf`. The syntax is easy to understand and allows for fine-grained control over server behavior.
An example of a basic `lighttpd.conf` snippet:
server.port = 80 server.document-root = "/var/www/html"
mimetype.assign = ( ".html" => "text/html", ".txt" => "text/plain", ".jpg" => "image/jpeg", ".png" => "image/png" )
index-file.names = ( "index.html", "index.php" )
dir-listing.activate = "enable"
Example for FastCGI with PHP
fastcgi.server = ( ".php" => ( "localhost" => ( "socket" => "/run/php/php7.4-fpm.sock", "broken-log-fd" => "enable" ) ) )
Advantages
- High Performance: Efficiently handles a large number of concurrent connections.
- Low Resource Consumption: Ideal for systems with limited CPU and memory.
- Security: Designed with security in mind, offering features like chroot.
- Flexibility: Modular design allows for easy extension and customization.
- Active Development: Continuously maintained and improved by its community.
Disadvantages
- While very capable, it may have a steeper learning curve for users accustomed to more feature-rich (and resource-heavy) servers like Apache or Nginx.
- Community support, while active, might be smaller compared to more widely adopted web servers.
