Launch FastCGI process?

jlist9 jlist9 at gmail.com
Wed Oct 21 09:34:33 MSD 2009


I was actually referring to lighttpd and I think mod_fastcgi does that, too.
It's very convenient.

I understand that you can find tools to manage processes. But it's just
more work, plus in some cases I run a server on a Windows box so many
of the Unix tools are not available. I think in many, maybe most, cases
a site just has both the web server and back-end server running on the
same box. Web server managing the fastcgi/scgi servers would be an
ideal solution.

Also, I think nginx and Python or Java (language of my back-end server)
are very stable so stability isn't my concern. Ease of setting up and
administration is.

On Tue, Oct 20, 2009 at 5:50 PM, Roger Hoover <roger.hoover at gmail.com> wrote:
> If you're talking about Apache mod_fastcgi, I agree that its built-in
> process management is convenient but if you give up a little convenience,
> you get some rewards in return.
> 1) Separation of concerns - let web servers manage requests and connections
> and let process managers do process management.  It keeps both simpler.
> 2) If you use a process manager like supervisord, you can use it to manage
> any kind of daemon you may want to run, not just FastCGI daemons.
>
> You could consider using a process manager to spawn both nginx and your
> FastCGI daemons.  Then you have one place to start and stop everything.
>
> On Tue, Oct 20, 2009 at 5:27 PM, jlist9 <jlist9 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> The web server I used before actually has options for both remote and
>> local
>> scenarios. For back-end process running locally, the web server can start
>> the processes.
>>
>> On Unix servers, it will also use a Unix domain socket to communicate
>> with the back-end process, which is faster than a network socket.
>>
>> I just thought this was very nice since I have one less thing to worry
>> about. Starting the web server will start the back-end processes and
>> stopping the web server will stop the back-end processes.
>>
>> On Tue, Oct 20, 2009 at 3:12 AM, Denis F. Latypoff <denis at gostats.ru>
>> wrote:
>> > Hello jlist9,
>> >
>> > Tuesday, October 20, 2009, 3:26:24 PM, you wrote:
>> >
>> >> Hi,
>> >
>> >> My understand is that nginx doesn't launch a process, being it a CGI
>> >> process
>> >> or FastCGI back-end server. I wonder what are the reasons behind this
>> >> decision.
>> >> I used to use another web server that takes care of launching FastCGI
>> >> processes.
>> >
>> >> The nice thing about it is that the web server checks if a backend
>> >> process is
>> >> running. If not, it automatically starts it. This means, for whatever
>> >> reason if
>> >> the backend process crashes, it will be re-launched. Also, the web
>> >> server
>> >> gets to control how many back-end server processes to start, according
>> >> to the conf file. With this managing the processes is really easy,
>> >> because
>> >> it's all managed by the web server.
>> >
>> >> This is a very handy feature. Any chance of having this in nginx?
>> >
>> > What if I have nginx running on server A, and many fastcgi backends
>> > running on servers B-Z?
>> >
>> >> Thanks,
>> >> Jack
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > --
>> > Best regards,
>> >  Denis                            mailto:denis at gostats.ru
>> >
>> >
>> >
>>
>
>





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