Running Apache with as few modules as possible

[Charles Howse]

On Apr 29, 2009, at 3:18 PM, Tom Worster wrote:

> On 4/28/09 6:45 PM, "Adam Vandemore" <amvandemore at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>> OK, here we go:
>>> With Apache running on the development machine, modules commented as
>>> in my first post --
>>> CPU:  0.8% user,  0.0% nice,  0.4% system,  0.8% interrupt, 98.1%  
>>> idle
>>> Mem: 27M Active, 139M Inact, 64M Wired, 11M Cache, 34M Buf, 648K  
>>> Free
>>> Swap: 512M Total, 60K Used, 512M Free
>>>
>>> Apache running on the same machine without any modules commented
>>> except mod_ssl --
>>> CPU:  0.8% user,  0.0% nice,  0.8% system,  0.4% interrupt, 98.1%  
>>> idle
>>> Mem: 27M Active, 134M Inact, 64M Wired, 13M Cache, 34M Buf, 3584K  
>>> Free
>>> Swap: 512M Total, 60K Used, 512M Free
>>>
>>> I just ran 'top' after starting httpd to get these figures, maybe I
>>> should have done something different?
>>> 'bout the only thing that makes sense to me is I have more Free  
>>> Memory
>>> when commenting all those modules.
>>> What is the list's opinion on this?
>>>
>> You should probably use pmap for a more accurate comparison.  you may
>> also want to set CFLAGS= -Os for size considerations(CPUTYPE as  
>> well),
>> and remove unnecessary modules from kernel if you haven't done so  
>> already.
>
> agreed. top lines of top  are too imprecise to really tell. but so  
> far as
> the data goes, this is consistent with my findings, i.e. disabling  
> mods in
> the apache runtime config file doesn't save enough to justify the  
> effort.

I recall Bill Gates saying, "640k is enough for anybody."  I agree,  
it's not much of a savings, and there's always the possibility that  
the webmaster may add something later that needs a module that's  
commented, and run around in circles before she/he realizes it.