Re: difference between apache's mod_fcgi, mod_cgid, and mod_fcgid?

Rob,

Let me get this straight.  You say you have one multi-threaded fastcgi
instance running per Apache instance and you handle all requests through
that one instance using a thread pool of worker threads that all block on
FCGI_Accept() and asyncronously handle requests?

I have used threads for years and attempted to do the same thing but ran
into the problem that fastcgi stores the handles to stdin and stdout in a
global non-syncronized structure.  Therefore, unless I put a mutex or
critical section around the entire code in the accept loop, fastcgi would
reset the io pointers when another thread would call FCGI_Accept().  Thus,
making it impossible to truly run more than one thread at a time.  The multi
threaded example code that comes with FastCGI is completely flawed and
tricks people who don't understand multi-threaded code into believing that
it actually works when in fact it does not.  

This is tricky to understand because you can make multiple threads that all
call FCGI_Accept(), and it will appear to work if you have a critical
section or mutex around the code in your loop, BUT, because the request
handling code is all synchronized with the critical section or mutex
(whatever you choose to synchronize with) it is really only letting one
block of code run at any given time.

If you think I am mistaken then please tell me what you did to get it to
work because I would much rather run a single instance of my CGI process
with multiple threads than multiple single threaded CGI processes.

Best regards,
Martin


-----Original Message-----
From: fastcgi-developers-bounces+chapmanm=pixia.com-xGejAJT2w6xVgU18Zptdi0EOCMrvLtNR@public.gmane.org
[mailto:fastcgi-developers-bounces+chapmanm=pixia.com-xGejAJT2w6xVgU18Zptdi0EOCMrvLtNR@public.gmane.org]
On Behalf Of Rob Lemley
Sent: Monday, December 07, 2009 12:04 PM
Cc: FastCGI Developers
Subject: Re: [FASTCGI] difference between apache's mod_fcgi, mod_cgid, and
mod_fcgid?

Tom Bowden wrote:
> Is the difference between these modules just a matter of version?  I
> am using Apache 2.2+ server -- and it uses mod_fcgid... from what i
> can tell the big difference is that the configuration keywords are
> difference ( FcgidAuthenticator, FcgidAuthorizer, FcgidAccessChecker,
> FcgidWrapper, etc.).

mod_fcgid is a different project.  I've never used mod_fcgid.   It
appears useful in situations where many processes are somehow started
and you want the fcgid process manager to kill them when not needed.

We have one multi-threaded FastCgiExternalServer process per apache2
virtual host.  These servers never exit.  Therefore, I never saw the
advantage to the mod_fcgid "process management strategy, which
concentrates on reducing the number of fastcgi server, and kick out the
corrupt fastcgi server as soon as possible".

I'm not sure, but I guess if you had a single threaded fcgi server and
wanted to have the number of instances of it (processes) to grow and
shrink dynamically, then maybe that's the purpose of mod_fcgid.  In our
case, we can accept fastcgi requests about as fast as apache sends them,
because our accept loop immediately spawns a new thread to handle the
request and goes back to get the next request.

One user has reported much slower response times for mod_fcgid.

The fastcgi server library code is somewhat "scary", global variables,
unclearly documented return codes, etc.  But it seems to work well for
what we're doing.

We've had problems with mod_fastcgi versions on windows.  I think we
haven't been able to go above a certain version (2.8?) with the most
recent version of apache 2.

Rob

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