Welcome to Lighttpd

Description

lighttpd is a secure, fast, compliant, and very flexible web-server that has been optimized for high-performance environments. It has a very low memory footprint compared to other webservers and takes care of cpu-load. Its advanced feature-set (FastCGI, CGI, Auth, Output-Compression, URL-Rewriting and many more) make lighttpd the perfect webserver-software for every server that suffers load problems.

For more info go to http://www.lighttpd.net/

New Releases

• 1.4.20: 2008-09-30 (known bugs)
• 1.4.19: 2008-03-10 (known bugs, patches)
• 1.4.18: 2007-09-09 (known bugs)
• 1.4.17: 2007-08-29 (known bugs)
• 1.4.16: 2007-07-24 (known bugs)
• 1.4.15: 2007-04-13 (known bugs)
• 1.4.13: 2006-10-10 (known bugs, patches)
• 1.4.12: 2006-09-23 (known bugs)
• 1.4.11: 2006-03-09 (known bugs)
• 1.4.10: 2006-02-08 (known bugs, patches)
• 1.4.9: 2006-01-14 (known bugs, patches)

Documentation

Tutorials

Step by Step to a working lighttpd installation:

1. Installing Lighttpd
2. Configuring Lighttpd
3. Setting up Applications
   1. Setting up PHP with Lighttpd
   2. Using Rails with Lighttpd
   3. Using Perl via a FastCGI dispatcher
   4. Using W3C Markup Validator with Lighttpd
   5. Setting up Blosxom with Lighttpd
   6. Setting up Ajaxterm with Lighttpd
   7. Using Apache+Subversion with Lighttpd
   8. Setting up Nagios with Lighttpd
   9. Setup SEO in Joomla
   10. Using Mason with Lighttpd and FastCGI
   11. Using Request Tracker with Lighttpd (via FastCGI, using Mason)
   12. Using Zope & Plone with Lighttpd
   13. Pastebin with Lighttpd (via FastCGI)
   14. Setting up Lighttpd and AWStats
   15. Python::Pylons (SCGI method)
   16. Python::TurboGears
   17. Python::Django (Old)
   18. Python::Quixote
   19. Python::webpy
   20. Using Pike with FastCGI
   21. Ruby::Mongrel
   22. Perl::Catalyst
   23. lighttpd + Nevow (Twisted) Virtual Hosts
   24. Wordpress Permalinks Howto
   25. Wordpress Clean URLs (Permalinks) using mod_rewrite
   26. Drupal Lighttpd with 'Clean Urls' HowTo
   27. Zen Cart and Ultimate SEO URLs on Lighttpd
   28. Using Joomla with Lighttpd (And SEF URL's)
   29. Using Lighty with ISPconfig (Web Hosting Panel) - Will be shipped with future ISPconfig-Released
   30. a fresh debian 4.0 etch and lighttpd installation with php, mysql, mod_geoip (maxmind database) and visitors webstats, monitored by runit
   31. Using lighttpd and Amazon S3 for static file serving
   32. A complete Debian server tutorial, including lighttpd for web hosting with ssl and virtual hosts
   33. How to configure lighty with suPHP

Or better two full-fledged books covering lighttpd and Rails:

• Lighttpd: The painless way
• Lighttpd by Pete Lavtesky | Packt Publishing, July 2008

Administration

1. Simple maintenance mode scripts
2. Startup scripts
   1. Ubuntu

Reference Documentation

• Configuration Documentation
  • Configuration File Syntax
  • Configuration Options
  • Sample Configuration File

• Reference
  • Modules Documentation: In-depth documentation of all lighttpd modules and their options.
  • Performance: Performance and Optimization Information.
  • Optimizing FastCGI
  • SSL Documentation: Configuration and Options.
  • Traffic Shaping: Bandwidth limit options.
  • Using SMP: Multiprocessor options and problems.

• FAQ: Frequently Asked Questions
• HOWTOS: How to ...

Community

• Forums: Official Lighttpd Forum / Lighttpd Google Group (Mailing List)
• IRC: freenode, channel #lighttpd
• Mailing list:
  • Announcements: mailto:lighttpd-announce-request@…
  • Discussion: mailto:lighttpd-request@… archives
• CodeSnippets: lighttpd section from CodeSnippets
• Lighttpd related tips, howtos from the nixCraft
• Other code contributions and extensions

Developing Information

• Lighty's life (Developer Blog)
  • Subscribe to Feed
• Developing lighty
• Subversion access to development code
• Writing Lighttpd Plugins
• How to Report a Bug
• Debug Variables for Configuration File
• Internals
  • HTTP state-engine
  • FastCGI state-engine
  • Plugin interface

Propaganda

Must Reads

• PoweredByLighttpd - a list of large sites running lighttpd
• Simplify Your Configfiles with Includes
• Optimizing Lighty for high Concurrent Large File Downloads
• Graceful Shutdown meets Graceful Restart
• Promotional Artwork

Benchmarks

Never trust us when we say that lighttpd is fast. Do your own benchmarks and feel for yourself how everything gets faster. If you just want to see some numbers, take a look at our benchmarks:

• our very own web-server shootout http://www.lighttpd.net/benchmark/
• thttpd, gatling, fnord and apache vs. lighttpd http://salinan.memoryhole.net/autobench/
• lighttpd and friends against litespeed http://litespeedtech.com/benchmark.html
• http://weblog.textdrive.com/article/44/taking-a-full-frontal-slashdot-lighttpdly
• Apache is sometimes better http://journal.paul.querna.org/articles/2005/06/24/debunking-lighttpd
• SCGI Apache2 vs. lighttpd http://www.quixote.ca/cgi-bin/moin.cgi/LighttpdScgi

Contributing

This wiki is open for everyone to provide help, grow and improve!