FastCGI and other changes
I've switched to FastCGI for several features and I've turned off trackbacks. You aren't supposed to notice. [Update 5 Dec 2005: but I sure did!]
There has never been an unexpectedly short debugging period in the history of computers.
[Update 5 Dec 2005: CPU usage is down by a factor of about five. That puts me well under the limit and should get me off the evaluation server.]
I've been getting periodic admonitions from my hosting company for excessive CPU usage. I think their definition of “excessive” is a little stingy, but I also think that starting four separate Perl processes for each page served could be considered abusive, so I'm trying to do something about it.
I've switched to FastCGI for those processes, which should help a lot. The scripts themselves aren't doing very much, so I really think it was the overhead of initializing Perl that was causing the problems. In any event, you're not supposed to be able to tell, but if something looks broken, please let me know. In particular, the comments and the folksonomy tag stuff are now being handled by FastCGI scripts.
I've also completely removed support for TrackBacks. That gets all the grotty RDF in HTML comments out of the pages and completely removes one process. There were a few pages with TrackBacks, so if you really think they're important, let me know and I'll consider putting them back with FastCGI.
Comments
Oh, I thought your web server ran in your home. Was that once true or did I misunderstand something? If it was, why did you change? Bandwidth?
I was forced to move it back in March. The upload speed available through my connection at home just couldn't keep up any longer.
Ah yes, must have missed that post. Thanks. The old VoIP QoS problem which everybody talked about but nobody solved. Good point. Maybe a server at home has to know if there's a VoIP call in progress and throttle its own output or something.
FWIW, moving the server out of my closet didn't have any noticable impact on VOIP QoS. I decided it was costing me more money in terms of (fruitless) time spent on the phone with (mostly clueless) tech support than it was saving. I'm back to twisted copper.
Is it an option to let FastCgi manage the processes and define zero children for PHP?
I'm sorry Frank, I really don't know. I don't use PHP.