Running a Web Server on Mac OS X: Apache Made Simple 44
An anonymous reader writes "Having recently moved over to Mac OS X, I decided to look into running my own Web and FTP servers again from home. To my surprise, I discovered what many already know... that bundled into the underpinnings of Jaguar's networking framework was a distribution of Apache that appears as simple or robust as I want it to be."
Yea? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Yea? (Score:3, Informative)
If you're going to be databasing with PHP and MySQL, make sure you get phpMyAdmin [phpmyadmin.org]. This is easily the most useful software I've ever downloaded.
It takes the software you already have: Apache and a browser, and turns it into an awesome admin tool for MySQL. Add databases, create tables, import/export data, browse data, you name it. Once you've got PHP, Apache and MySQL running, make this your next stop.
This is why XRaid is so important (Score:5, Insightful)
With the G5's from IBM, an increased bus (900MHz is what I've been reading for a 1.8GHz 64bit processor), and an easy migration path for legacy (3 years is legacy now!) apps to move from 32 to 64bit (a la SPARC), and Oracle 9i. Apple is positioning itself to be a major player. I know my company is taking notice.
All I want from Apple is a Apple PDA (I hate Palms) and a Tablet PC (screw MS). I build Healthcare software and both these products are a necessity.
Re:This is why XRaid is so important (Score:2)
Re:This is why XRaid is so important (Score:4, Informative)
I run IDE Software RAID on my Linux boxes and it's extremely fast. You can also run software RAID on the IDE drives in an XServe. However, eterprise apps need SCSI performance. XRaid is what will deliver that performance.
Re:This is why XRaid is so important (Score:3, Insightful)
Also, with external storage, you lose the (minor) benefit of the 1U server, which isn't a problem in most situations.
In conclusion, nevermind.
Xserve RAID is NOT SCSI (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Xserve RAID is NOT SCSI (Score:1)
X-RAID is a full-blown SCSI-RAID for the Xserver from Apple that will be announced soon (Apple mentioned it when they announced the Xserve).
No (Score:3, Insightful)
1. There is no such product as "X-RAID" from Apple, nor will there ever be. It is called "Xserve RAID".
2. Xserve RAID is ***NOT*** SCSI. It is connected via 2Gbps fibre channel (not SCSI), and its internal disks are ATA (not SCSI).
See this post for the transcript of the Xserve RAID introduction:
http://apple.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=43540
Re:No (Score:2)
But then again, 'scsi' isn't the be all and end all, after all, FireWire is also *scsi*
Re:No (Score:2)
Re:No (Score:2)
SCSI is a protocol, it just so happens that you're thinking of an older version of SCSI which had a specific physical cabling.
FireWire is book E of the SCSI spec... or something... look it up
FireWire is a form of serial scsi
Umm, Xserve RAID is also IDE (Score:5, Informative)
1. Xserve RAID runs IDE drives internally, just as the Xserve itself does (albeit with hardware RAID capability).
2. You have always been able to get an Apple-supported Ultra160 SCSI card, and add any external SCSI disk array you wish.
Could you give a link. (Score:2)
Yes you can install a Ultra160 but running a Dell in a rack of Apple XServes kind of defeats the purpose of trying "switch" to all Apple HW/SW.
Re:Could you give a link. (Score:1)
Re:Could you give a link. (Score:5, Informative)
The XServe RAID to XServe connection will be by fiber channel as Apple also announced.
This story talks about the fiber channel connection on the xServe RAID:
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/story/0,,t269-s211
http://www.apple.com/quicktime/qtv/xserve/ (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:http://www.apple.com/quicktime/qtv/xserve/ (Score:2)
SCSI has the ability to queue commands and re-order the pending commands in such a way as to reduce head movement. They can also read and write to the SCSI bus while they are carrying out received commands and share the SCSI bus bandwidth with more SCSI devices on the same bus.
An IDE bus can only service one command and one device at a time.
If a SCSI drive was working on one command fetching data and another four commands were pending: 1st near the start of the disk, 2nd near the end, 3rd near the start and 4th near the end, instead of the head movement going, start-end-start-end in the order that the commands were received by the drive, the drive could re-order the commands while it waits for the current command to complete so that the commands would be carried out: 1st, 3rd, 2nd then 4th so the head movement would go: start-start-end-end, reducing time to fetch the data due to reduced head movement. 1 full stroke versus 3.
For desktop apps, this doesn't matter so much. But for database servers which can tend to send lots of small requests scattered randomly around the disk, this can have a huge performance gain over IDE drives, many many times.
Perhaps Apple can remedy this a little with many drives. Maybe they can perform the re-ordering in their SCSI interface?.
Tagged command queing and connect/disconnect (Score:1)
There is still a big difference - you can get high performance 10 to 15krpm drive mechanisms with SCSI CAM or FC-AL interfaces, but not with ATA drives. The SCSI/FC mechanisms often come with better warranties too. However, they tend to run hotter which makes cooling critical. At least the Xserve takes advantage of SMART to monitor the drives, so failure can possibly be predicted in advance.
One has to zoom out a bit to take this into perspective. If you want 60gb of storage on-line with resiliency from single drive failure, you can choose several different tactics. On an Xserve, you can choose RAID 1 with two 60gb ATA 7200rpm IBM drives implemented in software with a little bit of hardware. Many server attached internal SCSI RAID solutions deployed in the x86 world use RAID 5 on 3-4 SCSI drives. Let's choose 3 10krpm 36gb SCSI drives. What kind of write through put can you expect with 3 10krpm SCSI drives in RAID 5 with a decent hardware RAID controller... say, something like a Mylex ExtremeRAID with a 200+mhz StrongARM and 128mb on-board cache vs. 2 7200rpm ATA drives in software RAID 1? Actually, the software RAID 1 will win a lot times. Why? Overhead of RAID 5 means that 50% more data has to be written, plus that CRC data has to be calculated, and the SCSI bus arbitration and the like. The Xserve with dual processors and software RAID 1 can simultaneously write from the exact same buffer to platter at the same time, driven by two CPU's. This is not like many software or hardware RAID 1 implementations. That means that the Xserve dual processor configuration can write as fast a single disk (about 40-45mb/sec). Again, we're talking sustained write speed as a lot of benchmark numbers I've seen don't sufficiently factor out the effects of cache. Then you factor in cost, and the software RAID 1 in the Xserve is very competitive. You could of course choose to run RAID 1 in hardware with 2 72gb SCSI drives. But then the cost hits you.
For Apple's target market, the software RAID implementation makes sense. If you need more than that, you can always choose external RAID solutions. If you have serious storage needs you should be talking Fibre Channel SANs anyways, regardless of platform.
Re:Tagged command queing and connect/disconnect (Score:2)
I don't disagree with any of your points. I just wanted to state the major advantages SCSI has over IDE, answering the "why would anyone use SCSI over IDE" type question.
Different horses for different courses. I wouldn't waste the money of a SCSI drive on a video editing workstation but I also would not choose IDE for a busy database.
It's IDE: Transcript of Xserve RAID introduction (Score:5, Informative)
[Steve Jobs:]
01:19:15
So, you've just heard all about Xserve, and what we'd like to also do is give you a little technology preview of something that we're going to be rolling out around the end of this year, and that is a companion product called Xserve RAID. So, this is Xserve and Xserve RAID is an amazing companion storage product, and it looks like this. I'd like to invite Alex Grossman from Apple up to give us a preview of Xserve RAID. [Alex Grossman, Director, Hardware Storage Marketing, Apple]:
01:19:50
Thanks, Steve. Okay. I'm really excited to give you a technology preview of our rack-optimized storage, and rack-optimized storage is the perfect complement to the server. What we've done is developed a very high density, 3U height rack-optimized storage device that has 14 drive bays. And with that density, we're able to put 14 120GB hard drives in the same Apple carriers that we use in the server, and deliver 1.68TB of storage, and that's massive. But to get that storage to the server, we had to choose a high-speed interconnect. We chose what we think is the best, which is 2Gb fibre channel. But we went one step further, and we put dual 2Gb fibre channel on the system. That gives us 400MB/sec of storage throughput. That's just incredible. And that is the latest and the greatest fibre channel out there. But RAID systems are all about data protection and to achieve data protection, we put dual RAID controllers in the system, and we put all the critical components as redundant components. In fact, the drives, the power, and the cooling are redundant in the system. And they're hot swappable. The way we achieved this was through a brand new Apple design architecture. And let me take you through that really quickly. The architecture has 14 independent hard drives and each RAID controller connects to 7 of these hard drives. The hard drives have independent ATA controllers that go to the heart of the system, and the heart of the system is the RAID processor. The RAID processor is very fast, and it's powerful. And we've added 128MB of processor cache to it for even better performance. Up on the top of the diagram, there's a little blue icon, probably not familiar to all of you, but that's the icon for 2Gb fibre channel. So our 2Gb fibre channel controller actually has its own dedicated PCI bus to the RAID processor. And that gives us substantial throughput, really really high throughput. This thing was designed for max throughput. Off to the side of that, you'll see what we call the RAID Environment Manager, and that's a tool - it's actually an embedded coprocessor - that gives us the ability to manage these RAID systems remotely. So we can set them up, we can manage them, and we can monitor them, very similar to what we do with Xserve. If we put the whole thing together and look at the entire diagram, we see that on each side, we have redundant power, we have redundant load-sharing power supplies, and in the center we have redundant cooling. And just like Xserve, the cooling is smart, so if one of the cooling systems fails, the other one will take up the speed. You'll also notice the little green bars up on top. Those are redundant drive cache, so, actually, we cache the processor memory. And overall, this makes a very fault tolerant system with very high throughput. Xserve RAID is going to be available, as Steve said, by the end of calendar year 2002. So let me just sum it up for you real quickly. 14 drive bays, very high density 3U enclosure, 1.68TB of massive storage online, and 2Gb fibre channel. That's Xserve RAID. And this is only a technology preview, we're going to announce this later in the year. Thanks, Steve.
[applause]
Re:This is why XRaid is so important (Score:1)
Anything in /etc/ (and other dirs, like /usr/ and whatnot) is Darwin, not MacOS X (that would be /System/ and /Library/). This is not a precise measure by any means, but roughly how I think of it.
I know I'm answering a (bad) troll, but I still feel this is an important distinction to make.
dalamcd
Don't forget to shut it down before you reboot (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Don't forget to shut it down before you reboot (Score:1)
Re:Don't forget to shut it down before you reboot (Score:5, Funny)
So you don't use software update then?
Re:Don't forget to shut it down before you reboot (Score:1)
Re:Don't forget to shut it down before you reboot (Score:1)
So why does installing Quicktime 6.0.2 require a reboot? Is Quicktime support built into the Kernel??
Re:Don't forget to shut it down before you reboot (Score:1)
Re:Don't forget to shut it down before you reboot (Score:1)
...and iTunes? and Airport software?
Re:Don't forget to shut it down before you reboot (Score:1)
a question about trailing slashes (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:a question about trailing slashes (Score:4, Informative)
Check your Alias, ScriptAlias and Directory directives and remove trailing slashes from them. And since you mention the ~username example, don't forget to check under the mod_user area.
Re:a question about trailing slashes (Score:5, Informative)
However, unless you configure it yourself, Apache on Mac OS X does not know what hostname it is running on so it can't redirect properly, and will send a redirect to the user to a url with the wrong site.
You can fix this either by changing the ServerName directive in /etc/httpd/httpd.conf or by formally changing your machine's hostname using NetInfo (some instructions here [nyc.ny.us]).
thanks (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:thanks (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:a question about trailing slashes (Score:2)
Now you can easily run SlashCode etc. (Score:4, Informative)
-- SlashCode (moderate difficulty)
-- GeekLog (pretty darn easy and very flexible)
-- phpBB (very easy, not too customizable)
-- WebMin (very easy, can use SSL & its own miniserv)
In addition, with a minor tweak or two he can run:
-- Resin JSP servers
-- ATG Dynamo e-commerce development platform (Java)
There are many possibilities, in fact quite a few of these run well out of the box on Mac OS X... just browse around sourceforge.net!
I've gotten a few sites running off Jaguar right now.. Here's a geeklog site running off a 266MHz G3-upgraded PowerTower Pro mac clone:
http://geeklog.47ronin.kicks-ass.net:8001
Re:Now you can easily run SlashCode etc. (Score:1)