[Info-vax] OpenSSL CSWS-2.2-1

[Neil Rieck]

Just thought I'd toss in my own 2-cents on the OpenSSL issue as well. 

I've been playing with WASD HTTPd v11.3 as a drop in replacement for CSWS-2.2-1

First off, WASD is a hackers delight because it is published with all the source code. If you have a DEC-C compiler then you will be able to support yourself if need be.

Secondly, during the install (you are given the choice of "just linking" or "compile then link") you will be prompted for five OpenSSL options depending upon what you've already got installed on your system. For example WASD can link against its own SSL library, or HP-SSL1 (OpenSSL 1.0 and higher) or HP-SSL (OpenSSL 0.9 and lower) although this last step is disabled by default when HP-SSL1 is present. How cool is that!

Last but not least, WASD HTTPd is the fastest web server in my shop. Although I'm running WASD on an old rx2600 (8 CPUs, 16 GB of RAM), it is faster than CSWS-2.2-1 on my rx2800-i2 (8 CPUs, 64 GB of RAM) as well as Apache 2.4 under CentOS-7 on my DL385p-gen8 (24 CPUs, 132 GB of RAM).

Now I haven't (yet) done full-load testing of WASD, but it appears get its speed from doing a lot of caching to avoid disk i/o -AND- does not be using the pre-fork model seen in CSWS on OpenVMS-8.4 or Apache 2.4 on CentOS-7

Comment: I've done at least a half-dozen installs of CentOS which included Apache by default. I do not recall ever being asked to choose between pre-fork or something else. And yet, all the Apache self-help sites tell you not to use pre-fork. Go figure!

Neil Rieck
Waterloo, Ontario, Canada.
http://neilrieck.net/docs/openvms_notes_wasd.html