Poor Apache/mod_perl performance

[RA Jones <ra...@dpw.clara.co.uk>]

Hi folks,

Please help with a problem I'm experiencing regarding performance. Setup 
is a VPS running Debian (Ubuntu server) on AMD64. In some fairly crude 
timing loops of a Perl script run from the command line, the AMD64 
out-performs my other platforms, so I think the Perl part is OK. But 
Apache/mod_perl performance is pretty abysmal.

I installed from a standard httpd-2.2.3.tar.gz from an Apache.org mirror 
site, and Bundle::Apache2 from CPAN - as far as I know neither is 
optimised for AMD64. The Debian Apache-Perl package is version 1.3 I 
think, and I would rather use the more recent version 2's so I avoided 
it. Is my poor Apache/mod_perl (and mediocre mod_cgi performance) likely 
to be related to the 64-bit architecture?

I'm not too familiar with Debian or 64-bit systems, having previously 
only setup 32-bit Win32 & Mandrake platforms using the XAMPP package 
(which won't run on the Debian 64-bit platform), so any help would be 
much appreciated.
-- 
Richard Jones
Leeds, UK
mailto:ra.jones@dpw.clara.co.uk

Re: Poor Apache/mod_perl performance

[Perrin Harkins <ph...@gmail.com>]

On 3/9/07, RA Jones <ra...@dpw.clara.co.uk> wrote:
> I installed from a standard httpd-2.2.3.tar.gz from an Apache.org mirror
> site, and Bundle::Apache2 from CPAN - as far as I know neither is
> optimised for AMD64.

I'm no compiler expert, but I don't think that matters.  Your gcc
should compile them with 64-bit support.

> Is my poor Apache/mod_perl (and mediocre mod_cgi performance) likely
> to be related to the 64-bit architecture?

In general, you can expect any program to run slower when compiled for
a 64-bit CPU, since it has to push more bits around.  Hopefully you
make up for that by using more memory and doing less disk access.

Frankly, 64-bit is very unlikely to be your problem.  How about
telling us more about it?  How are you testing it to see that it runs
slow?  Where did you see it run faster?  Does the same code run faster
through CGI?  You may just have some simple configuration problem.

- Perrin