Lighttpd

lighttpd

Developer(s)	Jan Kneschke
Preview release	1.4.76 (April 12, 2024 (2024-04-12)) [±]
Repository	git.lighttpd.net/lighttpd
Operating system	Cross-platform
Type	web server
License	BSD license
Website	http://www.lighttpd.net/

lighttpd (pronounced "lighty") is a web server which is designed to be secure, fast, standards-compliant, and flexible while being optimized for speed-critical environments. Its low memory footprint (compared to other web servers), light CPU load and its speed goals make lighttpd suitable for servers that are suffering load problems, or for serving static media separately from dynamic content. lighttpd is free software / open source, and is distributed under the BSD license. lighttpd runs on Linux and other Unix-like operating systems and Microsoft Windows. Under Windows, it can be controlled using the standalone program Lighty Tray.

Features

• Load-balancing FastCGI, SCGI and HTTP-proxy support
• chroot support
• select()-/poll()-based web server
• Support for more efficient event notification schemes like kqueue and epoll
• Conditional rewrites (mod_rewrite)
• SSL and TLS support, via OpenSSL.
• Authentication against an LDAP server
• rrdtool statistics
• Rule-based downloading with possibility of a script handling only authentication
• Server-side includes support
• Flexible virtual hosting
• Modules support
• Cache Meta Language (currently being replaced by mod_magnet)
• Minimal WebDAV support
• Servlet (AJP) support (in versions 1.5.x and up)
• HTTP compression using mod_compress and the newer mod_deflate ( 1.5.x )

Application support

lighttpd supports the FastCGI, SCGI and CGI interfaces to external programs, permitting web applications written in any programming language to be used with this server. As a particularly popular language, PHP performance has received special attention. Lighttpd's FastCGI can be configured to support PHP with opcode caches (like APC) properly and efficiently. Additionally, it has received attention from its popularity within the Ruby on Rails and Lua communities.

See also

• Comparison of web servers

External links

• Project Web site
• Freshmeat entry