webserver
howto?
Installing and using Litespeed
webserver under Linux Also in: 
What is Litespeed webserver?
Litespeed
webserver is as it already says a webserver, with 3 different types of
webservers, a standard edition, a professional edition and an
enterprise edition (work in progress). The Standard Edition is free for
use, just the amounts of connections is limited to 400 concurrent
connections. For the professional and the Enterprise edition you have
to pay. Pay you say? Yes, pay for a company who wants support you
have to pay for it, which is absolutly normal. So if I use the Standard
version I get no support? Wrong Litespeed Technologies gives you
support, through the forums and bug reports, so you are covered, but
paying gives you extra support. LiteSpeed webserver is a full-featured
web server with the
combination of ease of use, performance, security, and reliability! It
is easy in the way how it installs onto your server, which we will
describe in a seperate part. Futhermore it is easy to use in the way to
configurating, this because of a admin interface
in this interface you can change and add configuration
parameters. We even don't have to compile Litespeed
webserver, just unpack it and install it.
How fast is LiteSpeed? LiteSpeed is up to 5
times faster than
Apache, under high concurrency. How can
LiteSpeed be faster than Apache, well through a good architecture and
heavily optimized code. For detailed results,
please visit the litespeedtech.com site and go to their Benchmarks section.
LiteSpeed can handle thousands of concurrent connections with a small
memory footprint, and it is less vulnerable when facing various
attacks.
Installation of
Litespeed webserver:
Before we can install Litespeed webserver,
we have to download it from the litespeedtech
site. And get the latest version (stable or Beta).
We choice to download the latest version 1.5.8, click here
to download that version of litespeed. It's filesize is about 2.6 MB,
the release date of this version was September 9th,2004. Remark,
since 23 August 2004 the beta 2.0RC1 version is available, which
has the
following add-on features an Apache compatible rewrite engine,
Microsoft FrontPage Server Extension Support and directory auto
indexing. Want
to upgrade? Read the upgrade
part.
After we recieved the file, we have a tarred gzipped file in our
download directory, now follow the instructions below to install this
product, it is as easy as possible.
- Extract the downloaded file with :
root@eisnote:/root/download/> tar -zxvf lsws-1.5.8-std-i386-linux.tar.gz
- A new directory is created with the output of the
extracting, the name of the directory is: lsws-1.5.8
- Change to that directory: cd lsws-1.5.8
- Start the
install script : root@eisnote:/root/download/lsws-1.5.8>
./install.sh
(I'm using Bash so ./ )
- Now the installing script starts and you will see a
license agreement. Read it and if you agree, enter Yes to continue
- The next question asks you where you want litespeed to be
installed, we select the directory /var/www
- Due to the fact that the directory /var/www exists we get the following
response:
The destination directory /var/www exists.
To upgrade, press 'Enter', current configuration will not be changed.
To reinstall, press 'R' or 'r'.
To change directory, press 'C' or 'c'.
Would you like to Upgrade, Reinstall or Change directory
[U/r/c]? enter
the r for Reinstall
- After this, we get a question which username we like to
use for administrator, the default name is admin we stick to that. Press Enter
- Now we have to enter a password for the username admin, think of a password , enter
it and after this you have to enter the same password again to verify
that you haven' t misspeld it.
- After this we have to give a username which will run
litespeed webserver. As noted by the installation program this
shouldn't be the root user, because of security reasons. The default
user is nobody we also
take this one, so press enter.
- Now we have to give a group name, the default group is nogroup also this will do for us,
press enter.
- Now the script asks you on which port the litespeed
webserver has to look for incoming data, the default port is 8088, but
we are using port 80, so enter
80. Make sure that no
other program is listening to port 80!
- Because Litespeed webserver has a admin panel which we can
access through a webbrowser we get a question on which port we want to
have the administration web interface, the default port is 7080 and this port we are using
too, so press enter.
- The install script now asks if we want to setup PHP. Of
course we want that, press enter and the default Y we be filled in.
- Next issue, Suffix for
PHP script(comma separated list) [php]: press enter cause
this is good.
- A little delay and PHP is installed. Then we get a
question if we want to change PHP opcode cache setting? Just enter this
question because we have installed the 'builtin' PHP.
- We now get a finished
installation response like:
Congratulations! The
LiteSpeed Web Server has been
successfully installed.
Command line script -
"/var/www/bin/lswsctrl"
can be used to start or stop the
server.
It is recommended to limit access
to the web administration interface.
Right now the interface can be
accessed from anywhere where this
machine can be reached over the
network. Three options are available:
1. If the interface needs to be
accessed only from this machine, just
change the listener
for the interface to only listening on
the loopback
interface -
localhost(127.0.0.1).
2. If the interface needs to be
accessible from limited IP addresses or
sub
networks, then set up
access control rules for the
interface accordingly.
3. If the interface has to be
accessible via internet, SSL (Secure
Sockets
Layer) should be used.
Please read respective HOW-TOs on
SSL configuration.
To change configurations of the
interface, login and click
"Interface Configuration" button on
the main page.
The administration interface is
located at
http://localhost:<ADMIN_PORT>/
or http://<ip_or_Hostname_of_this_machine>:<ADMIN_PORT>/
As you can read in the above text we should secure the admin interface,
do this as you need to secure it.
And the question is we would like to have LiteSpeed Web
Server started automatically when the machine restarts [Y/n]?
Well we would like that, so just Enter again to comfirm this question.
- And after this the installation script asks us "Would you like to start it right now
[Y/n]?". Well we want to see if it works, so press Enter
to start LiteSpeed Webserver.
- Now we get the following response:
[OK] lshttpd: pid=3722.
LiteSpeed Web Server started successfully! Have fun!
To check if Litespeed webserver
is active we do a: ps
-ef | grep ls with the following response:
root
3721 1 0 14:20
? 00:00:00 ./lshttpd
nobody 3722 3721 0
14:20 ? 00:00:03 ./lshttpd
root
3725 3722 0 14:20
? 00:00:00 lscgid
Which say to us that Litespeed webserver is running. But the
best way to check this of course is to start a webbrowser and go to
localhost
like you can see here:
LiteSpeed webserver Administration:
To administer LiteSpeed
webserver Litespeedtech build a administrator panel in their webserver.
We saw that we had to define a portnumber
for the administrator panel, which we had on port 7080. So what we have
to do to get into the administrator panel is to open a webbrowser and
go to our server , in this case the localhost, and surf to it on port
7080. Enter the following command in de url-bar:
http://localhost:7080/ and the administrator panel will appear.
Here the url-bar 
After you have entered this, you will get the following screen, which
is the first screen of your administrator panel.
Now click on the 
to logon to the
administrator panel. You still remember your password don't you ? Now
we have to enter the userid and the password in the next popup screen: 
Here we enter the name Admin
and the password you have entered during the installation procedure. If
you have enter this, you can hit the OK
button to logon to the administrator panel. Then we get to see the
Administrator Interface which looks like this:
In this Administration Interface
you got 3 clickable icons to administer your LiteSpeed webserver, I
give a short explanation about it,
if there is demand I perhaps will describe them in more detail later
on, but all needed information is in the documentation that
LiteSpeedTech gives us. For now I give you a brief overview about them,
following below:
Server Configuration icon:
Click with your mouse on the Server Configuration icon and
the server
configuration section will appear in the browser.
There are quite some options in this sections, for the whole server there are 5 tabs with
options, futhermore you got a Listeners
and a Virtual Hosts
section. The options of the whole server a defined in 5 tabs and here
are their sub-options:
| General |
Here you can find
general setting for your webserver like the following |
Server Process
|
Server name, owner,Priority, I/O Buffer, Swap
dir, Start server automatic? |
| General Settings |
MIME settings, Index Files, Show version?,
Administrator email |
| Server Log |
The logfile settings. |
| Access Log |
The access log settings |
| HT Access |
Allow access or not! |
| Expires Settings |
Expires settings |
| Tuning |
Here
we fine tune the LiteSpeed webserver |
| Connection Tuning |
About maximum connections, buffers and timeouts. |
| Request/Response Tuning |
The maximum settings are entered here. |
| GZIP Compression Tuning |
Do you want GZIP Compression? |
| Security |
Here we
can mange the security of LiteSpeed webserver |
| File
Access Control |
Links and masks |
| Per Client Connection
Control |
Limits are defined here |
| CGI Resource Control |
All about CGI |
| Access Denied Directories |
The path to the access denied dirs. |
| Access Control |
My I access it or not? |
| External
Apps |
Here we can manage and add
external programs |
Fast
CGI
|
maximum connections and so on |
| more |
your external programs |
| Script
Handler |
here we definitions of
script handlers |
|
Script
Handler Definitions
|
Handler type, name and action |
The Options for the Listeners is a Listener tab (you
can have more listeners running, see docu litespeedtech), and when you
click on a hostname in the listener tab you get a general tab, where we
can enter the following information for that host:
Address settings;
The options for the Virtual Hosts is a virtual host tab,
in this tab you see all your virtual host(s).
If you now click on a virtual hostname, you get 6 tabs where you can
setup/modify or add settings to your virtual host.
These tabs are:
General
|
General
|
Settings about document root, gzip, email administrator |
Index Files
|
Want to use server settings or virtual host settings |
|
Virtual Host Log
|
Where to put the logfiles, how large and so on. |
| Access log |
Where to put the access log, how large may it become,
how long? |
| HT Access |
Access rights |
| Expires Settings |
enable/disable expiration? |
| Security |
|
General
|
Enable context control? |
| Hotlink control |
All about link control (hotlinks) |
| Access control |
The Allow and Denied lists |
| Authorization Realm |
Locations, cache size, timing |
| External Apps |
|
| Context |
|
| /protected/ |
Directory , access, names |
| /blocked/ |
Directory , access |
| Script Handler |
|
|
Script Handler Definition
|
Suffix, Handler type, Handler name, Action |
| Error Pages |
|
|
Customized Error Pages
|
Where are the error pages? |
Service
Manager:
Click with your mouse on the
Service Manager icon and the service
Manager section will appear in the browser.
In this section you can see
information about the following three things: Server, Listeners and the
Virual Hosts.
To begin with the view only information, this is for the Listeners here you just can look
which listeners are running and
which are not. In this example, just 1 Listener is available (Eislon).
It is running and it looks for incoming information on
port 80. Virtual host is also Eislon. This Virtual Host(s) we can Disable and Reload. To do this, click on the
corresponding
text under the topic Actions.
For the Server section we have something more to tell, we can here Restart- and Reload the
Server. We also can View the
LOGs of LiteSpeed webserver, if we click on this, a new browser
window will be show with
the following contains:
At the Display Level: you can select the
following 5 display levels:
- ERROR
- WARNING
- NOTICE
- INFO
- DEBUG
You
can search into the logfile, all other buttons should be clear to you.
Now comes one of the nicest thing of this menu, it is call Real-Time Report with this
option you get a realtime view
of what your webserver is doing, how many active connections, uptime
(webserver) andso on, it is best said with a screen
shot well here I got one for you. My advise is to play with it, you can
set you refresh rate on the following times: 
Now the promissed screenshot of the realtime report:
Click on the Refresh button to change
refresh-rate. And click then on 
to
start the realtime report
utility. To manual refresh the information press 
. The Default mode is the snapshot
mode which
takes a snapshot of your webserver stats. In this window you can see
information about the following
things: System Information
(what does the host do);
lshttpd
Process (what does lshttpd uses);
Server Level Statistics (speed
of (current) transfers and how the connections are.)
External App
(shows the resources off the external applications);;
Virtual host _AdminVhost (Requests
in process for all defined hosts);
Virtual host Eislon (gives
information of requests in progress for host eislon).
And this concludes the part of
the Service Manager, we now go on to the last topic, WebAdmin
configuration.
WebAdmin Configuration:
Click with your mouse on the
WebAdmin Configuration icon and the
WebAdmin Configuration section will appear in the browser.
In this WebAdmin Configuration
screen you change thing for Admin
Server and for Admin
Listeners.
For the Admin Server you can
change/edit the following things:
General
|
Do you want to
enable Core Dumps? Set it here.
|
Virtual Host Log
|
You can change here
Log settings for the virtual host
|
Access Log
|
What do you want to
log into the access log file? How large may the logfile become?
|
Access Control
|
The Allow and
Denied list for the server!
|
For the Admin Listeners you
have the options of the Listeners for the servers you run and for the admin Listener it selfs.
You can here give the port number on which the admin listener listens,
must it be a secure line or not!
For the virtual servers you can even give up ip addresses which are
allowed to use the admin interface!
Just take a look at it, and change it to your needs.
Well this ends the overview of the admin
interface but not after I told you that if you keep the admin interface
to long open it will
auto disconnect you, this is done for security reasons. If you are
timed out and want to go to something in the admin interface, it will
say that you are disconnected and that you may logon again. If you do
so you will be send to the last clicked options, even if you are
disconnected, this of course if you logon is checked and found valid.
The timeout screen will look like this:
To logon again, click on the
text log on to close
the browser window just click on close.
Upgrading LiteSpeed
Webserver:
The latest version of LiteSpeed webserver 1.5.7 is available as of 10
August
2004, just
installed 1.5.6 and now we have to install a new one? No we just gonna
upgrade it, here you find the upgrade procedure and it is very easy.
Start with downloading the 1.5.7 version of
LiteSpeed webserver, unpack it and then goto the unpacked directory
(lsws-1.5.7) here you start the install-script in a terminal or on the
console with the following command: > ./install.sh yep the
same script please.
We then get almost the same
installation questions, I go by them one for one again to show you what
is different (not much ;-)
1. Do you
agree with above license?
We agree to accept the license which was displayed above this question,
to do this we have to type Yes
as answer.
After this we get the following information:
Please
specify the destination
directory. You must have permissions to
create and manage the directory. It is
recommended to install the web server
at
/opt/lsws, /usr/local/lsws or in
your home directory like '~/lsws'.
ATTENTION: The user 'nobody' must be
able to access the destination directory.
2. Destination [/opt/lsws]:
We here make the choice to install the litespeed webserver to the
directory /var/www which
should be the same as the directory that we have entered during the
first installation of litespeed webserver. Can this give problems?
Because we are running the webserver on the same directory? Well
that's a thing Litespeed has thought of, just read ahead and you will
see how this is done. Notice the remark that the user nobody must
have access to the destination directory, look with ls -l on the
directory /var/www if nobody is owner of it, or look into the
grouprights if nobody is included.
After we have given the installation directory /var/www, we get the following
information:
The destination directory /var/www exists.
To
upgrade, press 'Enter', current configuration will not be changed.
To
reinstall, press 'R' or 'r'.
To
change directory, press 'C' or 'c'.
3. Would you like to Upgrade,
Reinstall or Change directory [U/r/c]?
Due to the fact that we want to upgrade our Litespeed 1.5RC4 webserver
to the 1.5 version we have to enter an U
for upgrade.
4. Would you like to reset the login
password for Administration Web
Interface [y/N]?
This question is what it says... do you want to reset the Administrator
Web interface login password? We say N for no here.
After this, the new version of litespeed webserver is being installed,
like the below lines tells us:
Installing, please wait...
As we have done with the first installation of Litespeed webserver we
had PHP installed to, now we get some information and a question about
it:
In
order to maximize the performance of PHP, a pre-built PHP opcode cache
can be installed automatically. An opcode cache increases performance of
PHP scripts by caching them in compiled state, the overhead of compiling
is
voided.
Note: If an opcode cache has been installed already, you do not need to
change it. If you built PHP binary by yourself, you need to built
PHP opcode cache
from source as well, unless the version of your
PHP binary is same as the pre-built PHP opcode cache built for.
5. Would you like to change PHP
opcode cache setting [y/N]?
As we want to use PHP we just can hit Enter. And the upgrade is done,
as we can concluded from the next information:
Congratulations! The
LiteSpeed Web Server has been
successfully installed.
Command line script -
"/var/www/bin/lswsctrl" can be used
to start or stop the server.
It is recommended
to limit access to the web
administration interface.
Right now the
interface can be accessed from
anywhere where this
machine can be
reached over the network. Three
options are available:
1. If the interface needs to be accessed only from
this machine, just
change the
listener for the interface to only listening on the loopback
interface -
localhost(127.0.0.1).
2.
If the interface needs to be accessible from limited IP addresses or sub
networks, then set up access control rules for the
interface accordingly.
3. If
the interface has to be accessible via internet, SSL (Secure Sockets
Layer) should be used. Please read respective HOW-TOs on SSL
configuration.
To change configurations of the
interface, login and click
"Interface Configuration" button on the
main page.
The administration interface is located
at http://localhost:<ADMIN_PORT>/
or
http://<ip_or_Hostname_of_this_machine>:<ADMIN_PORT>/
Again we get information that we should take care and limit accessing
the administrator interface. Like described above (I can't do it
better:-)
Now the last question is if we want to restart Litespeed webserver, and
of course we want to make us of the new webserver, so just it Enter and
it will start as you can see below.
6. Would you like to restart it right
now [Y/n]?
[OK] lshttpd:
pid=3611.
LiteSpeed Web
Server started successfully! Have fun!
Next to check if it really works!!
7. Check for the Upgrade to be sucessfull, you can do this by the
following means:
1. Check with the webbrowser if you (still)
can access your website by typing in the
urlbar http://localhost/
2. Go
to the commandline and use the command: ps -ef | grep lshttpd and see
if you get the
information of lshttpd on pid number 3611 ! If this is ok,
your
upgrade has worked.
Upgrading complete and we have a new stable LiteSpeed webserver
running. And what a piece of cake it was.
Conclusion:
If you want a to have a quick webserver
with php/cgi-support build in, this is a very good choice. Most
websites have enough with these features and if you want
more options, use the externel apps feature. Okee, apache has lots of
modules to add on, but what of it do you really use, and what do you
prefer? So in overall we can say that LiteSpeed
webserver is "Easy to install and Easy in use webserver. What
more do we want?". In my opinion.. give it a try, on a different port
perhaps and see how it preforms for your website. For more information,
go to Litespeedtech.com ,
comments about this review can be send to eislon@zonnet.nl
