[Catalyst] fcgid

[Matt S Trout]

On Mon, Sep 29, 2008 at 09:46:42AM -0400, John Lee wrote:
> Matt S Trout wrote:
> > fcgid is designed for shared hosting. it's basically useless for dedicated
> > setups.
> > 
> >> I ask this, because it seems that it works better than fastcgi, it is 
> >> maintained and prefered, but I can't see why.
> > 
> > mod_fastcgi is maintained, just minimally and quietly, and it works
> > perfectly.
> > 
> > For dedicated setups it's the only option; I dunno who you think prefers
> > fcgid but I'm certainly not one of them.
> > 
> 
> Hmm, now I'm all confused.  We'd recently switched to mod_fcgid from
> handling fastcgi with lighttpd, due to its better process management.
> However, I'm always akin to trying new things, so this piques my
> curiosity around mod_fastcgi.
> 
> What's the general concensus in the catalyst community nowadays?  Is
> mod_fastcgi preferred at large over mod_fcgid these days? 

You shouldn't let your fastcgi module do process management at all, anyway,
that's what FCGI::ProcManager is for - and by having the fastcgi stuff
external you can, as Peter Karmen points out, bounce the application
separately. Not only that but you can do zero-downtime upgrades by starting
the new version on the same socket -before- stopping the old version.

> I saw a post
> from Jonathan Rockaway almost two years ago noting that "mod_fastcgi is
> crufty and slightly broken, while mod_fcgid seems to be more sane",

*shrug*

Jon's an apps dev. I'm ex-operations and design system deployment strategies
on a regular basis. His opinion doesn't count in my world, I don't let client
developers anywhere near systems stuff if I can help it :)

Note though that fcgid -is- more sane for shared hosting and for the web
server doing process management.

But as noted above, for dedicated production deployments you don't want that
anyway, and mod_fastcgi isn't broken at all, it's just picky about its config
sometimes :)

Also, mod_fastcgi isn't maintained as "actively". But that's because it
already works, so they just put out the occasional bugfix release :)

-- 
      Matt S Trout       Need help with your Catalyst or DBIx::Class project?
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