[Catalyst] Using Catalyst with mod_per or FastCGI on heavy traffic web application

Adam Mackler nabble at mackler.org
Sat Jan 30 06:59:12 GMT 2010


On Fri, Jan 29, 2010 at 06:14:09PM -0800, Bill Moseley wrote:
> I don't really see how what server you use effects error messages.  Stderr
> is stderr.   I would never use the canned Apache error responses anyway for
> a site.
> -- 
> Bill Moseley

Oops, I see did not explain that point clearly.

By error messages, I was refering to error messages that visitors to
my website see, not the kind that I see in my log.

With mod_perl, if your script has an error, for example if your
database server goes away, you'll either get the default "Internal
Server Error" message, or (hopefully) a customized error message that
looks like it's part of your website.  Same using fastcgi.

But with mod_perl, when you're restarting your application, you're
starting the whole web server, so during that time...which can be
longer than you expect for a number of reasons...people attempting to
reach your site will get browser errors saying your site is down or
unreachable.

But with fastcgi, the web server keeps running and can serve a static
error page while the fastcgi server is not available.  And with no
perl in the mix, restarting the web server itself takes less time and
can be done more gracefully.

Adam Mackler



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