Lighttpd - lightweight low footprint web server

Having used Apache server for a long time I was looking for a web server with a much lower memory footprint. The solution I found was Lighttpd which is pronounced 'lighty'. Its used by many web sites including YouTube and Wikipedia as it allows them to scale a lot better with the same hardware. Its easy to use, powerful and quick to setup.

Pre Installation Check

• Default listen port is 80
• Check nothing is already bound to port 80

$ netstat -an | grep -i 80  

• If the port was bound you would see 

tcp        0      0 0.0.0.0:80              0.0.0.0:*               LISTEN 

Installation

• On Linux Mint, Ubuntu or Raspberry Pi 

$ sudo apt-get -y install lighttpd 

•  Lighttpd will automatically start. Check the port is now bound

$ netstat -an | grep -i 80 

• Check status

$ /etc/init.d/lighttpd status
 * lighttpd is running

• Open in a web browser : http://localhost/index.lighttpd.html and you should see the default message

Manual Bug Fix

• In the latest builds the default lighttpd.conf contains a bug
• Open in a text editor and find the line starting 'index-file.names'

$ sudo vi /etc/lighttpd/lighttpd.conf

• As hightlighted above there is an extra quoue in " index.lighttpd.html"
• Remove quote and save as shown below

• Restart service

$ sudo /etc/init.d/lighttpd restart

Change Default Port

• Its a good idea to change the default listening port from 80 to another non bound port
• I am going to change it to port 8888
• First check nothing is listening on that port

 $ netstat -an | grep -i 8888

• Open config file in text editor

$ sudo vi /etc/lighttpd/lighttpd.conf

• Add

 server.port = 8888

•  Save file and restart

$ sudo /etc/init.d/lighttpd restart

•  Open in a web browser : http://localhost:8888/index.lighttpd.html

File and Directory Details

• HTML files location : /var/www
• Default directory index : index.html
• CGI Scripts : /usr/lib/cgi-bin
• Logs : /var/log/lighttpd

Further Configuration

• Lighttpd has many support modules that enhance functionality
• RRDTool can be used for statistics