Re: [Mod-pubsub-developer] New installation instructions

[<kr...@po...>]

Greg Burd writes:
> On Tuesday, December 3, 2002, at 02:35  AM, Joyce Park wrote:
> > 1)  I'm finding it hard to believe any Windows user could build and
> > run this thing.  Am I wrong?  Is there any way we could make it
> > easier for the Windows masses?
> 
> I wrote an install.doc explaining how to get this working with IIS and 
> the ActiveState Perl.  It had pictures and everything.  I'll see if I 
> can find it.

I know Windows users who could build and run it, but I agree that it
is painful.  I wrote clENS (now pubsub.py) to make it easier --- if
you have Python installed, you just run the script, and it works.

> > 2)  I hate the whole .htaccess thing, and think it causes a lot of
> > trouble.  Are people really going to be running the mod_pubsub server
> > in situations where they won't have access to httpd.conf?  If not,
> > it's much more foolproof to suggest they set the ExecCGI stuff in a
> > <Location> block inside httpd.conf rather than fooling with
> > .htaccess.  I suggest we make this the default.  Anyone opposed?
> 
> Totally agree with you.

Maybe people really won't run it in those situations; the idea was
that someone could install in ~/public_html without needing
httpd.conf access, though.  We wanted easy deployment on
garden-variety web-space accounts.  Now, I think, most people have
their own servers.

> > 3)  You're supposed to create a world-writeable directory called
> > kn_events -- but after the mod_pubsub server starts writing to that
> > directory, you have to change the permissions again to make its
> > subdirectories world-writeable too.  I think this is a bug, I'm going
> > to file it.

What happens if you don't change the permissions?  Does the server
break?  It would surprise me if it created subdirectories it couldn't
write to.

The directory needs to be writable to the mod_pubsub server;
world-writability guarantees that.  I installed the source tarball and
it seemed to work fine, including creating the top-level kn_events
directory.  My Apache uses suEXEC, so the CGI scripts run as me, and I
have write access to the public_html directory.

> While you're at it, why not include the directory in the tar/zip
> archive?

I don't recommend creating world-writable directories, in general, and
I don't think the tarball should include one --- opening up a security
hole as soon as somebody unpacks the tarball doesn't seem considerate
to me.

> > 4)  In my tests at home, I'm only getting about one event per second
> > or two.  Does anyone know how to speed this thing up any?
> 
> There was a way to load the perl code and keep it hot, that would 10x 
> the server.  The perl server was never really "fast".

In some configurations, the CGI server could handle up to four events
per second.  Running it in mod_perl, though, it could handle about 30
events per second.  It's mod_perl clean; you can run it in
Apache::Registry.  I'll see if I can post notes on how to do this
soon.

I'll report on my progress on the main mailing list, so that other
people can see life in the project and don't have to ask things like,
"Why do I only get 1.5 events per second?"

-- 
<kr...@po...>       Kragen Sitaker     <http://www.pobox.com/~kragen/>
Edsger Wybe Dijkstra died in August of 2002.  The world has lost a great
man.  See http://advogato.org/person/raph/diary.html?start=252 and
http://www.kode-fu.com/geek/2002_08_04_archive.shtml for details.