Re: Minimal hardware for web server
On Mon, 7 Jul 1997 sfuqua@fuquasc.wab.wku.edu wrote:
> I have offered to set up a web server for computer science students
> here at Western Kentucky University to practice their cgi and perhaps
> java skills on. The machine would never have to support more than
> about 5 simultaneous users, and usually would have only one user at a
> time. The idea is to have a machine that students can bang on without
> endangering vital files on one of our big servers.
>
> I administer a sun sparc with a few hundred users, and I run linux on
> my personal machine, but I've never supported multiple users on a
> linux box. I'm not sure how much load I can handle with linux for a
> given level of hardware. This is a chance to show what debian linux
> can do, so I'm excited -- but the hardware I will have will be very
> marginal at best. Will a 386 work? I might be able to wheedle
> something a little better, but I'm not sure. I know java grinds down
> fairly sustantial machines -- would there be any hope of getting java
> to run at all on a 386? Maybe we can reduce the web resource
> requirements by running boa instead of apache. Are there any other
> tricks for marginal hardware I can use that immediately spring to
> mind?
>
> I'd hate to fall on my face because of weak hardware and have people
> blame linux; it would be better to cancel the whole thing rather than
> bomb out.
>
> How low can the hardware go?
If they blame linux, they aren't good CS students. However, they may get
very annoyed with the performance.
Stay with apache so people can develop and test cgi that runs on the 'big
boys'. Memory is the killer. When I run perl5/cgi/apache on a 386 with 8mb
there is a noticable delay while memory swaps. I can view flat html with
large graphics at good speeds. The performance should be better than this
because it is easy to switch to an open edit in telnet, add the missing {
or whatever and save the file. Then you switch back to netscape and click
on reload. If it takes 30 seconds to create another 'server error' page,
they will not blame linux or the hardware. They will blame you.
I would think that 16mb ram would be a minimum regardless of CPU. As far
as Java goes, if the client is weak it becomes annoying. I usually try not
to waste mips and have a lot of tasks running. I really hate it when I get
to a website that has 'cute' applets because they can really slow things
down on a 486 or slower pentium.
If the machine is going to be a server/workstation with X available, you
may want even more ram.
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