Nginx - Google Summer of Code ideas

[mike]

Sorry for the messy email I'm in a lab with a crappy keyboard that is
too hard to use properly and the mouse is basically useless :P

On Wed, Mar 11, 2009 at 10:50 AM, Manlio Perillo
<manlio_perillo at libero.it> wrote:
> mike ha scritto:
>>
>> oh, i've got a nice little wishlist going ;)
>>
>> features:
>> * mod_svn
>
> The only idea of implementing mod_svn from scratch in Nginx is crazy :).
>
why is that? isn't it just DAV? it just needs to support some more
OPTIONS commands or something? (I could be off my rocker, I thought I
read that somewhere)

>
>> [...]
>>
>> * dynamic upstream management, basic healthchecking should fix that, I
>> think.
>> * external alert when upstream goes down (or could also trigger a
>> command) - might not be required with above
>
> This does not need to be done with Nginx.
> Just use a pre existing healthchecking software with each of the upstream
> servers.

and what, have an /etc/nginx/upstreams.conf file that i manually
update and kill -HUP nginx or whatever appropriate signal to reload
every time i notice an upstream going up or down?

another issue is nginx is not 'smart' so the healthchecking would need
to be more than just tcp port 80 is open... i guess that's where
external things come in to play. but simplifying the software stack
would be amazing, and it could be an -optional- module in nginx :)


>
>> [...]
>>
>> authentication:
>> * SPNEGO/Kerberos/etc. integration - (I'm paying someone $400 w/
>> RentACoder already)
>> * someone on IRC mentioned adding in digest support
>>
>
> If someone is interested in sponsoring digest auth support, I should be able
> to implement it.
> I have already implemented a rather complete HTTP Digest Authentication
> support in my Python WSGI framework.

I don't care as much about digest myself but it was something someone
brought up. This is open source software too. Doesn't anyone do
anything anymore just for the ego boost? :) I know I would be if I
knew some C!

>
>> [...]
>> * have a way to log statistics (simple byte and request counter) per
>> Host: header, right now flatfile parsing and stuff for that basic info
>> is not the funnest
>>
>
> Why not use a separate log parser?

i am right now. but for basic statistics... seems like major overkill,
especially when you start looking at gigs of data from multiple
webservers and having to parse/merge the data

>
>> management:
>> * cluster manager (manage multiple nginx instances, like zeus' web
>> interface)
>>
>
> Isn't it possible to use some existing tool?
>
>> [...]

like cpanel? etc? all of those suck. have you ever used zeus's? it has
all the capabilities of the webserver avaialble. it needs to be a tool
designed around nginx's capabilities and such. not just "setup foo.com
under /home/foo/bar/web"