Slashdot Mirror
An Overview of the Boa Web Server
Gentu writes "There is a pretty new and little known, lite web server in town, named Boa. The server can run very fast on older machines, even on embedded devices, but it is only CGI-based. OSNews introduces Boa (running under Linux) and it includes some preliminary benchmarks against Apache and thttpd."
It seems a little odd to compare BOA and Apache. Granted Apache is the web server of choice so a comparison is not too bizarre but, it is still an apples to oranges comparison.
Boa is much smaller than Apache. This seems like a good thing on the surface, especially for embedded applications, as was suggested in the article. But, Boa is slower and much less functional than Apache. They really aren't comparable servers.
Or a mercedes S-class to a Ferrari, what you have to consider is if you want that speed. I dont really think that Boa has been designed as a competitor(not sure if this is the right word) to Apache. Time will tell it may take off you never know
I didn't see any benchmarks against Apache or thttpd in the article - I saw boa benchmarked with ab and zb. Looks interesting enough to try out, although I still haven't even bothered putting in thttpd to serve graphics yet, so I probably won't ever get around to boa after all. :/
creation science book
Hi
According to my tests BOA beats Apache.
BUT the ZEUS web server (www.zeus.com) which is 'feature complete' (including mod_perl in version 4.2) still beats both of them.
Have a nice day!
I've used Boa in a number of cases where certain groups of CGI scripts need to run as a specific UID and I didn't want to use the SUID functionality of Apache. Because it is so lightweight, having a few of these hanging around for various citical system UIDs can really be handy, esp. if you have an aversion to using SUID wrappers and such. A good example is using Boa running as the same UID as the mailing list processor so you can have web administration of the list rosters. And the users don't even know about it because I use the ProxyPass directive to shuttle the requests from the standard port 80 up to the port on which Boa is running, so my logging is still centralized/standardized through Apache.
Boa is very cool. Kudos to the developers!
OK Boa is good for running on a 2mb 386, but I would like to host a domain web with some more features than it could contain. With apache needing at least a 200mhz pc and a hefty speck of ram, what is there for the middle ground, when you have a 486 or early pentium sitting around and should be put it to work?
where the www is heading, IMHO. Seven years ago, anyone was hardly using dynamic stuff on the web, and IIRC back then it was mostly flat HTML.
But today, when 90% of the stuff served (besides images) by web servers are dynamic content, why does a web server like this get a headline?
Ok, I know it does CGI, but come on, CGI is as dead as Ultrix.
I'm not trying to let this project down. I'm sure there are plenty of happy users that don't need the "bloat" associated with Apache, IIS and other servers--but I'd be surprised if they did anything more advanced than the occasional photo album homepage.
We all use bash (mostly). Not because it's the smallest, but because it does everything we've come to expect from a shell.
To me, Boa seems a lot like the effort to rewrite the unix utilities in asm to reduce size. It's a challenging excersise, but in the long run it's going nowhere.
These are very, very different approaches to creating a scalable server.
See Non-blocking I/O is good for more background on what multiplexing is and why it is good.
MORTAR COMBAT!
Very true. Several years ago when I was in college I ported Boa to DOS. At the time I thought it was the world's first DOS httpd but was later informed someone had beaten me to the punch. At the time Corel or someone were releasing their free DOS replacement and talked to me a couple of times about including Boa for DOS but eventually their project died.
You can get it for MS-DOS too. The source and executables are available at http://www.fdisk.com/doslynx. If you use a multitasker in DOS you can even run it along side WordPerfect. ;-)
mrg
Some other small (and embeddable) web servers to check out:
Device Management Framework: http://www.artlogic.com/dmf/
This is a web application platform for making device management apps - say, for controlling a cable modem, printer, or industrial equipment. It supports some cool stuff including SOAP and XML-RPC.
GoAhead WebServer: http://www.goahead.com/webserver/webserver.htm
This server is also embeddable but not as useful as the Device Management Framework. It's fine for serving a personal web site, or as an alternative to PWS.
Enjoy.
Fascinating to see something I wrote almost ten years ago turn up on slashdot as "new."
I wrote it on a dare, sort of. There weren't any single process web servers at the time and a friend of mine said "it shouldn't be that hard..." I named it boa because my pet at the time was -- wait for it! -- a boa constrictor.
Gee, that's it. Yay for open source living ten years on its own.
-- psp
-- Stop the violins!