Re: [dev] Superservers: Yay or Nay?

From: Thomas Oltmann <thomas.oltmann.hhg_AT_gmail.com>
Date: Thu, 26 Mar 2020 15:06:24 +0100

> I don't think superservers really reflect the UNIX principle. Why would
> you want to plug in your simple HTTP-server into the behemoth that is
> systemd. What's wrong with quark's idle resource usage, which I think
> is damn low?

systemd is a notoriously bad example. I only mentioned it because it's
probably the most-used superserver nowadays, thruth be told.
Generally, superservers don't have to be very complicated.
The original inetd is around 1000LoC if I remember correctly.
FreeBSD's builtin one is 2500LoC.
And I'm sure you could write a suckless one in like 500LoC if you wanted to.

> Don't get me wrong, I'm not offended by your remarks or anything, I
> just cannot fathom it given other things eat up orders of magnitude
> more resources than an idle HTTP server.

Well, in theory one superserver can replace lots of different idling
servers, for example HTTP, SMTP, IMAP, FTP etc. So while one server alone
might use less resources than the superserver, all of them combined would use
quite a bit more.

One way or another, I decided to go without any superserver support, as it makes
the process hierarchy of my server a lot simpler. (It's already pretty
complicated
because of privilege separation).

Best regards,
          Thomas
Received on Thu Mar 26 2020 - 15:06:24 CET