http://www.osnews.com/story/2217/An_Overview_of_the_Boa_Web_Server Exploring the Future of Computing en-us Copyright 2001-2009, David Adams adam+nospam@osnews.com Mon, 06 Jul 2009 17:58:41 GMT http://www.osnews.com/images/osnews.gif http://www.osnews.com http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? This definitely looks like a Web server with potential. Not everyone needs the power of Apache and this could be an excellent alternative to Insecure Internet Server (IIS). Mon, 25 Nov 2002 03:47:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Only problem I find for a small web server project is that it does not support PHP directly (mySQL/PostgreSQL). Mon, 25 Nov 2002 04:35:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? You may as well make a post about mathopd (www.mathopd.org) while you are at it. Just as small, but dramatically faster and supports php and such (through CGI). Anyways, only reason why I tout this one is because I've been running it succesfully for a couple years now. Mon, 25 Nov 2002 05:02:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Well, it used to be that I was poor student with parttime work. And I wanted to setup one of those cool firewall/router/server boxes that everyone was setting up. Sadly the only machine I could get at the time was a 386 with a 1.2 and a 800mb drives and 16mb of ram(maxed out). Running epic sessions over ssh only worked a blowfish cypher, etc..reiserfs & lvm took quite a bit of my boottime.

So anyway apache wasn't an option, but I wanted virtual host support. So guess what, I used boa since it ran fast..but gee..it only has ip-based(doesnt work for cheap people like me) virtual hosting. So i spent a few hours modifying the source to support that. And let me say..the code sucks, their structure just refuses to be altered. I see very little room for expansion. Anyway just my rant..

Btw, later i got a pIII 550 to replace the 386, and setting up virtual hosts on apache took me about 2x as long cos i forgot to include the default handler Silly using other people's code Mon, 25 Nov 2002 06:10:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? So i spent a few hours modifying the source to support that. And let me say..the code sucks, their structure just refuses to be altered. I see very little room for expansion. Anyway just my rant.

That's a typical problem with uniprocess internal multiplexing. I'm guessing it relies heavily on non-blocking I/O as well.

This sort of structure just leads to messy and difficult to maintain code.

Most likely this server would crumple under any sort of load as well. Mon, 25 Nov 2002 08:42:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Boa is great frontend for apache+perl. Boa servs static pages and acts as redirector for apache with mod_fastcgi. I'm very happy with that configuration. Mon, 25 Nov 2002 09:33:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? thttp is slowly climbing the ranks over at netcraft.

One of the best little full web servers out there. So easy to setup and run and damn fast.
http://www.acme.com

Either thttp or Tux for me if not Apache.

(also, X15 from Chromium Communications was looking to be the BEST even over Apache, but I think development has stopped.)

Just my 2cents Mon, 25 Nov 2002 11:01:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I think this article is a bit OT @ osnews.com also it has been written by the boa author... Mon, 25 Nov 2002 12:26:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? there are soo many Webserver alternatives on all common & outbattled OSes, that it's just a nice read.
RobinHood, BONE, PostgreSQL & PHP on a 500MHz PII/w BeOS R5 PE is all I need.
Streaming Internet Radio integrated ;-) (big hooray to Soundplay, THE multi - versatile Medialayer).
All for free & simple. Mon, 25 Nov 2002 13:35:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I read the first page of the article, an interesting read, but i had to stop, for the love of god, someone tell that guy how to use pronouns. I got tired of "Boa can..." and stuff like that. Mon, 25 Nov 2002 14:45:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? You may as well make a post about mathopd (www.mathopd.org) while you are at it. Just as small, but dramatically faster and supports php and such (through CGI). Anyways, only reason why I tout this one is because I've been running it succesfully for a couple years now.

Quite right. And why wasn't more said about thttpd which is a great tiny fast webserver? Mon, 25 Nov 2002 15:36:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Yeah. And why doesn't Eugenia register httpdnews.com while she's at it?

Mr. Nelson apparently submitted an article about Boa, thus the article is only about Boa. If you want an article about http server X, I suggest you write one and submit it for our reading pleasure . Mon, 25 Nov 2002 19:16:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? >I think this article is a bit OT @ osnews.com

Not at all. It is a great subject and OSNews is not just about OSes. How many times will I have to say that?
http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=363

>also it has been written by the boa author...

Yes indeed. I asked Jon to write an article for OSNews about Boa a few months ago, and this article is the result of this request. Mon, 25 Nov 2002 19:27:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Use of sendfile() syscall boa far more better. With previous versions, my celeron 366 with shitty realtek card was able to serve file with speed about 4-5 MiB/s. But was completetly unusable at the same time - mouse in X hardly worked, keys won't respond, overall performance was sluggish.

With latest boa I can serve files with speed 6 MiB/s (as long as this file is in cache) without any slowdown. In fact, I don't even realizing that somebody is getting from me an .iso image over LAN - everything goes smooth! Mon, 25 Nov 2002 19:43:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? It's performance is GREAT! Doesn't fork, and you can load in modules or use the built in TCL interpreter. did I mention it doesn't fork and handles database connection pooling quite well?

AOL uses it...it handles large loads really well. Tue, 26 Nov 2002 04:50:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I'm constantly amazed by the horsepower people throw at web serving. My primary server is still the same K5t-133 with 64M of RAM that it was running on in 1996, and it runs Boa very well indeed. When I turn off the Distributed.net code cracker, the CPU load while Boa is actively serving files and all system overhead is less than .2.

The real magic is that Boa doesn't try to be everything to everybody the way that Apache does.

Yes, there are other web servers. They work well too. That's not the point. The article was about Boa, not abut comparisons between small web servers.

Bob- Wed, 27 Nov 2002 17:48:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments