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If I want to serve some static content over http from Ubuntu, with an emphasis on security and efficiency (at low-moderate load), what's the best choice?

poolie
  • 9,241

3 Answers3

3

We are using micro-httpd for this purpose.

It is very small and started by inetd for every single request, so it is only good for low-load environments, but it does what we need it do to. The only configuration options are the directory to be served and the port to listen on. For SSL/HTTPS support, stunnel would be used (a wrapper between unencrypted and ssl-encrypted connections).

Some more information from the man page:

It implements all the basic features of an HTTP server, including:

  • Security against ".." filename snooping.
  • The common MIME types.
  • Trailing-slash redirection.
  • index.html
  • Directory listings.
Philipp Wendler
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3

Apache is very secure and extremely efficient at serving static content, especially at low-to-moderate load. It is also only an apt-get away, no additional configuration needed.

Is there anything which makes you to look for another web server?

Sergey
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0

Very common are Lighttpd and Nginx. They are very alike and bear similar features and both support PHP if needed. Lighttpd runs as a single process but with a single thread and non-blocking I/O, where as Nginx works as one master process but delegates its work unto worker processes.

FixFaier
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