Apache2 Outperforming lighttpd 1.5
Multithreaded JavaScript has been published with O'Reilly!Here's an output of top on my VPS running Ubuntu 10.04. The first output is while a server was running Apache2 (and lighttpd on a secondary port). The Apache2 instances were under heavy stress testing at the time, and their total CPU was 30.2%. In the second output, lighttpd had taken over as the main server instance (Apache2 was completely disabled). In this scenario, lighttpd was under no load and is using 46.2% CPU (those php-cgi processes are part of lighttpd). Memory usage is counted and doubled, since the VPS is telling the OS that it has twice the RAM available.
I must be doing my math wrong or something; Isn't lighttpd supposed to be the more efficient of the two servers?
top - 21:00:13 up 47 days, 21:08, 1 user, load average: 0.33, 0.15, 0.05
Tasks: 30 total, 1 running, 29 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie
Cpu(s): 0.8%us, 0.2%sy, 0.0%ni, 98.9%id, 0.0%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st
Mem: 946344k total, 505324k used, 441020k free, 0k buffers
Swap: 0k total, 0k used, 0k free, 0k cached
PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
17925 www-data 15 0 195m 11m 5816 S 3 1.3 0:01.49 apache2
14217 www-data 15 0 195m 11m 5816 S 2 1.2 0:01.44 apache2
19854 www-data 15 0 195m 11m 5816 S 2 1.3 0:01.39 apache2
30485 www-data 15 0 195m 12m 6704 S 2 1.4 0:01.68 apache2
30540 www-data 15 0 195m 11m 6064 S 2 1.3 0:01.69 apache2
14215 www-data 15 0 195m 11m 5816 S 1 1.3 0:01.40 apache2
19855 www-data 15 0 195m 11m 5972 S 1 1.3 0:01.36 apache2
30515 www-data 15 0 195m 11m 5864 S 1 1.3 0:01.68 apache2
30495 www-data 15 0 195m 11m 5852 S 1 1.3 0:01.67 apache2
30532 www-data 15 0 195m 11m 5824 S 1 1.3 0:01.82 apache2
12190 www-data 15 0 195m 11m 5812 S 1 1.2 0:01.69 apache2
9641 mysql 18 0 307m 32m 7816 S 0 3.5 1:40.80 mysqld
9787 nobody 18 0 149m 13m 916 S 0 1.5 0:12.37 memcached
1 root 15 0 23308 1560 1264 S 0 0.2 0:03.15 init
3982 root 15 0 18008 2120 1492 S 0 0.2 0:00.29 bash
9678 root 15 0 21072 1012 776 S 0 0.1 0:11.93 cron
9752 root 15 0 70608 3212 2484 S 0 0.3 0:00.05 sshd
9771 syslog 15 0 12444 796 604 S 0 0.1 0:10.71 syslogd
9829 root 18 0 49256 1084 540 S 0 0.1 1:37.00 sshd
9873 root 15 0 69512 2452 780 S 0 0.3 0:11.83 sendmail-mta
9958 www-data 25 0 122m 7396 4480 S 0 0.8 0:00.01 php-cgi
9977 www-data 15 0 123m 10m 6060 S 0 1.1 0:06.17 php-cgi
9981 www-data 15 0 125m 18m 11m S 0 2.0 0:06.65 php-cgi
9982 www-data 15 0 124m 12m 8520 S 0 1.4 0:06.30 php-cgi
9984 www-data 15 0 124m 14m 10m S 0 1.6 0:06.26 php-cgi
23562 root 15 0 19084 1328 1060 R 0 0.1 0:00.04 top
25949 tlhunter 15 0 70608 1796 1032 S 0 0.2 0:01.12 sshd
26144 tlhunter 18 0 17856 1920 1444 S 0 0.2 0:00.00 bash
30255 root 16 0 35580 1272 972 S 0 0.1 0:00.02 su
30406 root 18 0 193m 8508 3980 S 0 0.9 0:00.07 apache2
30.2% belongs to apache (doubled since the VPS doubles our reported max RAM)
top - 22:47:45 up 2 days, 9 min, 1 user, load average: 0.06, 0.01, 0.00
Tasks: 24 total, 1 running, 23 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie
Cpu(s): 0.0%us, 0.0%sy, 0.0%ni,100.0%id, 0.0%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st
Mem: 946344k total, 415264k used, 531080k free, 0k buffers
Swap: 0k total, 0k used, 0k free, 0k cached
PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
1 root 15 0 23308 1552 1260 S 0 0.2 0:00.37 init
7182 tlhunter 18 0 70608 1668 944 S 0 0.2 0:00.00 sshd
7302 tlhunter 16 0 17856 1920 1444 S 0 0.2 0:00.00 bash
11438 root 16 0 35580 1268 972 S 0 0.1 0:00.01 su
13622 www-data 18 0 91568 2992 908 S 0 0.3 0:01.07 lighttpd
13625 www-data 23 0 137m 7240 4364 S 0 0.8 0:00.02 php-cgi
13646 www-data 15 0 143m 18m 12m S 0 2.0 0:00.15 php-cgi
13647 www-data 15 0 144m 21m 14m S 0 2.3 0:00.38 php-cgi
13648 www-data 15 0 143m 25m 19m S 0 2.8 0:00.32 php-cgi
13649 www-data 15 0 143m 18m 12m S 0 2.0 0:00.15 php-cgi
13700 www-data 20 0 137m 7236 4364 S 0 0.8 0:00.02 php-cgi
13730 www-data 15 0 144m 26m 19m S 0 2.8 0:04.91 php-cgi
13731 www-data 15 0 144m 28m 21m S 0 3.1 0:05.11 php-cgi
13732 www-data 15 0 144m 28m 21m S 0 3.1 0:04.92 php-cgi
13736 www-data 15 0 144m 29m 23m S 0 3.2 0:04.97 php-cgi
17557 root 18 0 18004 2052 1428 S 0 0.2 0:00.00 bash
20168 root 16 0 70608 3204 2484 S 0 0.3 0:00.03 sshd
22281 root 18 0 19084 1320 1064 R 0 0.1 0:00.00 top
28592 mysql 17 0 177m 30m 7572 S 0 3.3 0:04.26 mysqld
29985 root 18 0 21072 1012 772 S 0 0.1 0:00.50 cron
30127 root 15 0 49256 1084 540 S 0 0.1 0:00.01 sshd
30362 syslog 15 0 12444 796 604 S 0 0.1 0:00.11 syslogd
30469 nobody 18 0 81428 9644 872 S 0 1.0 0:00.43 memcached
32607 root 18 0 69512 2412 744 S 0 0.3 0:00.71 sendmail-mta
46.4% belongs to lighttpd (doubled since the VPS doubles our reported max RAM)
Thomas has contributed to dozens of enterprise Node.js services and has worked for a company dedicated to securing Node.js. He has spoken at several conferences on Node.js and JavaScript and is an O'Reilly published author.
