Build notes and Tuning tips for Solaris

lighttpd seems to be increasingly popular, so much so that netcraft has started tracking it's use on production websites. I've spent some time building, tuning and running simple performance stress tests on lighttpd 1.4.15 on Solaris and thought I'd share what I learnt.

Building lighttpd

My build of lighttpd uses the openldap library from Cool Stack. I also built and installed pcre-7.1 in /opt/coolstack using the following script :

#!/bin/sh
INSTALLDIR=/opt/coolstack
CFLAGS="-fast -xipo -xtarget=generic"

make distclean
./configure --prefix=$INSTALLDIR CFLAGS="$CFLAGS"
make
make install
…

Build notes and Tuning tips for Solaris

lighttpd seems to be increasingly popular, so much so that netcraft has started tracking it's use on production websites. I've spent some time building, tuning and running simple performance stress tests on lighttpd 1.4.15 on Solaris and thought I'd share what I learnt.

Building lighttpd

My build of lighttpd uses the openldap library from Cool Stack. I also built and installed pcre-7.1 in /opt/coolstack using the following script :

#!/bin/sh
INSTALLDIR=/opt/coolstack
CFLAGS="-fast -xipo -xtarget=generic"

make distclean
./configure --prefix=$INSTALLDIR CFLAGS="$CFLAGS"
make
make install
…

Build notes and Tuning tips for Solaris

lighttpd seems to be increasingly popular, so much so that netcraft has started tracking it's use on production websites. I've spent some time building, tuning and running simple performance stress tests on lighttpd 1.4.15 on Solaris and thought I'd share what I learnt.

Building lighttpd

My build of lighttpd uses the openldap library from Cool Stack. I also built and installed pcre-7.1 in /opt/coolstack using the following script :

#!/bin/sh
INSTALLDIR=/opt/coolstack
CFLAGS="-fast -xipo -xtarget=generic"

make distclean
./configure --prefix=$INSTALLDIR CFLAGS="$CFLAGS"
make
make install
…

In a previous post, I mentioned the availability of the dtrace extension for Cool Stack's PHP.  Using this extension and the Cool Stack MySQL, it is possible to analyze the performance of your application running on this stack. At JavaOne, we demoed this using the open source MediaWiki and SugarCRM applications.  dtrace is especially useful in analyzing complex multi-tier applications like AMP. Thanks to Angelo Rajadurai for the creation of the scripts that I describe below.

Analyzing PHP calls

So, let's look at a simple dtrace script that counts how many times a particular PHP function is called :

#!/usr/sbin/dtrace -Zqs

php*:::function-entry
/arg0/
{
        @[copyinstr(arg0)]=count();
}

You can copy the …

Inserting user-defined DTrace probes into MySQL source code is very useful to help user identify the performance problems in the application level and the database server, In addition, the cost of the USDT probe is basically neglectable. Each probes inserted into the src can be enabled by adding the code like:

 If (PROVIDER_PROBE_ENABLED()

{

                PROVIDER_PROBE(arg0,…);

}

The steps to add DTrace probes into MySQL is very straightforward.

Step 1: Figure out what probes are needed to insert into the source code

This is the difficult part that requires you understand the MySQL implementation details. Generally, it is good to insert probes to clarify the DB response time distribution …

Inserting user-defined DTrace probes into MySQL source code is very useful to help user identify the performance problems in the application level and the database server, In addition, the cost of the USDT probe is basically neglectable. Each probes inserted into the src can be enabled by adding the code like:

 If (PROVIDER_PROBE_ENABLED()

{

                PROVIDER_PROBE(arg0,…);

}

The steps to add DTrace probes into MySQL is very straightforward.

Step 1: Figure out what probes are needed to insert into the source code

This is the difficult part that requires you understand the MySQL implementation details. Generally, it is good to insert probes to clarify the DB response time distribution …

Inserting user-defined DTrace probes into MySQL source code is very useful to help user identify the performance problems in the application level and the database server, In addition, the cost of the USDT probe is basically neglectable. Each probes inserted into the src can be enabled by adding the code like:

 If (PROVIDER_PROBE_ENABLED()

{

                PROVIDER_PROBE(arg0,…);

}

The steps to add DTrace probes into MySQL is very straightforward.

Step 1: Figure out what probes are needed to insert into the source code

This is the difficult part that requires you understand the MySQL implementation details. Generally, it is good to insert probes to clarify the DB response time distribution …

New OpenSolaris Project: Web Stack 

We just launched a new OpenSolaris project called Web Stack.  With the great response we have seen for Cool Stack, we thought this would be a good time to get the community to participate. Although the starting point for Web Stack is Cool Stack 1.1, we hope it will grow much beyond that. Please vist the project site to get more details on why we are doing this. We'd love to get your feedback on whether you think this is a good idea and what open source web technologies/apps you would like to see added.

And of course, we hope that you will participate in the project. You can help by building portions of the stack, add new libraries and applications, …

Here are the instructions for building mod_jk.

1. Download the source and untar it.

2. Ensure you have Sun Studio compiler in your PATH followed by /usr/ccs/bin. Save the following in 'make_solaris.sh' in the 'native' directory :

#!/bin/sh
INSTALLDIR=/opt/coolstack
APACHEDIR=$INSTALLDIR/apache2
make distclean
PATH=$INSTALLDIR/bin:$PATH
export PATH
./configure --with-apxs=/opt/coolstack/apache2/bin/apxs --with-java-home=/usr/java --with-prefix=$INSTALLDIR
make
make install

3. Go to the 'native' directory and run ./make_solaris.sh

4. Edit your httpd.conf file to include :

  LoadModule jk_module        modules/mod_jk.so

5. Restart the apache httpd server.

Let me know if this …

If you're at JavaOne this week, please do visit the "Solaris + AMP" pod (#976). We are demoing the use of SMF and dtrace on Cool Stack. You can see how dtrace can be used to debug and trace the code path through your entire application, starting from the Javascript in the browser, through PHP and finally to MySQL at the back-end. We are also distributing Cool Stack 1.1 on a DVD at the pod.

I will be there on Thursday between 11:00 - 3:00 PM, so please do stop by and say hi. 

Shanti