FastCGI and PHP

[Igor Clark]

Hi Philip,

I'm not sure about the way PHP-fcgi manages its processes internally,  
but there's some detail about the way the FastCGI communication  
happens in the FastCGI protocol spec at http://www.fastcgi.com/devkit/doc/fcgi-spec.html

In short, the protocol works by exchanging FCGI "records" between the  
client and server which are basically chunks of information wrapped up  
in FCGI "messages". Each message header identifies itself including a  
request ID and a record type, allowing the client and server to  
establish input, output and error streams. The web server (FastCGI  
client) passes the normal CGI/1.1 environment variables (configured by  
nginx as fastcgi_params) to the FastCGI server's input stream, and the  
FastCGI server returns the request's output to the web server via its  
output stream. Any errors should be passed back via the error stream.

There is scope in the protocol for multiplexing these connections,  
i.e. communicating multiple requests and responses across the same  
connection and identifying each by its request ID, but there seems to  
be no flow control built into the protocol, making this a somewhat  
dangerous proposition. As I understand it the protocol also allows for  
long-lived FastCGI connections which are re-used for multiple request/ 
response cycles, but this isn't possible with nginx currently as it  
uses HTTP/1.0 to talk to upstream servers; additionally, the upstream  
server might be overwhelmed if nginx made hundreds of long-standing  
connections to it.

There's further discussion of this and FastCGI in general at http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.web.nginx.english/2974/focus=2974

cheers,
Igor

On 2 Apr 2008, at 08:08, Phillip B Oldham wrote:

> After the recent thread on php-fastcgi and memory leaks, I've  
> realised that I'm a little unsure as to exactly how nginx and php- 
> fastcgi communicate with one another. I'm wondering whether anyone  
> could spare the time for clarification?
>
> I understand that when started (in my case using spawn-fastcgi from  
> the lighttpd project) php-fastcgi creates a master process and a  
> number of child processes. Nginx then passes requests through to php- 
> fastcgi, which processes the request and returns a response.
>
> What I'm unsure on is whether nginx is passing the request directly  
> to one of the child processes or the master process which then  
> delegates.
>
> I'm also unsure as to how nginx passes through the fastcgi params we  
> configure.
>
> The reason I ask is that I have some useful components written in  
> Eiffel which I'd like to make available via a webserver. I've found  
> a small fastcgi server written in Eiffel, which I'd like to expand  
> on to replicate the kind of through-put the php-fastcgi instance I'm  
> running allows.
>
> Thanks.
> -- 
>
> *Phillip B Oldham*
> The Activity People
> phill at theactivitypeople.co.uk <mailto:phill at theactivitypeople.co.uk>
>
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--
Igor Clark • POKE • www.pokelondon.com