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Mon, 06 Apr 2009

/Admin/Cherokee: Introduction to the Cherokee Web Server

I came across this post[1] singing the praises of the Cherokee web server, and thought I would give it a try. So far, I would say not bad....

Per their own measurements[2] they seem to do well in the speed department, though I have read elsewhere that that advantage is found mainly in the area of smaller files. Rumor has it that relative to Apache, Cherokee has less dependencies and uses less system resources, and is very stable.

Without a doubt Cherokee has an advantage in the area of configuration, as they have a very nice and seemingly very complete GUI configurator, that puts fairly extensive help right at one's fingertips. That turned out to be a good thing, as I flailed around a bit getting a couple things working, and the GUI made the trial & error process quite a bit faster, I think.

Of course the default Debian install serves up html out of the standard /var/www web root just fine. But I am playing with Cherokee on my backup server so I need to be able to see the backuppc controls, which are Perl-based CGI.

But first, bring up that wonderful GUI configurator.... The thing is not started by default, and after it is started, it only listens on localhost:9090, so ssh to the Cherokee machine thusly:

ssh -L 9090:localhost:9090 remote_IP

which forwards port 9090 on the local host to port 9090 on the Cherokee host. Then:

cherokee-admin

on the Cherokee host, which will incidentally provide a username and password for login, for when you point a browser at localhost:9090.

The backuppc Debian package configures Apache automatically, but of course this does not work for Cherokee. In the Cherokee admin app click on "Virtual Servers --> default". Add "index.cgi" to the "Directory Indexes" field.

Then click on the "Behavior" tab, at the bottom of which you will find "Add New Rule". Configure as follows:

Add New Rule

Rule Type Extensions

Extensions cgi

Handler CGI

Security:Validation Mechanism Fixed List

Security:Methods Basic

Security:Realm backuppc

At the bottom of the Security tab, use "Add New Pair" to add a userid / password for access to backuppc.

And now, do not forget to click on the "Save" button at the bottom of the GUI's left column. And create a soft link to the backuppc executable:

cd /var/www
ln -s /usr/share/backuppc/cgi-bin/ backuppc

And now pointing your browser at

http://cherokeeHost/backuppc/

should bring up a password dialog window, followed by the backuppc control application.

Something that is not so well documented is that php5-cgi[5] must be installed for the Cherokee FastCGI PHP handler to work (and php5-mysql if you want PHP to talk to MySQL). Python apparently needs special treatment[4], but I have not attempted to get it working.

[1] http://www.sourceguru.net/archives/202
[2] http://www.cherokee-project.com/benchmarks.html
[3] http://www.cherokee-project.com/doc/other_faq.html
[4] http://www.rkblog.rk.edu.pl/w/p/django-and-cherokee-server/
[5] http://www.howtoforge.com/how-to-install-and-configure-cherokee-web-server-with-php5-and-mysql5-on-ubuntu-8.10

posted at: 08:32 | path: /Admin/Cherokee | permanent link to this entry

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Mon, 06 Apr 2009

Rule Type	Extensions
Extensions	cgi
Handler	CGI
Security:Validation Mechanism	Fixed List
Security:Methods	Basic
Security:Realm	backuppc