The Processes Property Sheet
Initial Number of Processes: Most web browsers have the capability of
receiving more than one file at a time. This greatly speeds up the download time
of an entire web page (including graphics). As a rule, one process serves one
file in Savant. This field contains the number of processes that Savant initially
starts. If Savant needs more processes, then it will create more. The default
of 5 should be sufficient for most web servers. If your server experiences
periods of inactivity followed by high-traffic bursts, you may want to increase
this number to make response time faster during the high-traffic bursts.
Maximum Number of Processes: This is the maximum number of processes
Savant will create. Effectively, this is the number of clients your web server
can handle simultaneously. If more people request connections than this number
allows, they will be refused connections. By setting this field to a reasonable
number you can prevent malicious people from locking up your computer by creating
thousands and thousands of server processes. This field's initial value is high
enough for a moderate traffic web server, but should probably be increased to a
number between 100 and 200 for higher traffic sites.
Number of Processes to Keep Free: Savant will create more processes when
there are less free processes than the number in this field. The default number
for this field should be OK for most situations - you may need to increase it if
your server has high bursts of traffic as described above in "Initial Number of
Processes". Be careful to keep this number much smaller than the Maximum Number
of Processes, otherwise you will prevent users from being able to connect to your
server.
Process Compact Period: After Savant responds to an HTTP request by
sending a file, it will keep the process it created alive for the number of
seconds specified in this field. This is based on the theory that most web pages
are going to be read in only a few minutes, and then a link leading to another
page on the same server will be clicked by the user. By keeping the process
alive, Savant can save time and processing by responding to HTTP requests from
the same user by using the same process. This keeps Savant from constantly
terminating and creating processes to serve requests from a single user. Some
web browsers are extremely well mannered, and send Savant a message when the
user will no longer be using the process. When Savant receives this message, it
will immediately terminate the process. Otherwise, it will wait for the number
of seconds specified in this field. The default value of 3000 seconds (5 minutes)
is usually more than sufficient. If you have a high-traffic web site, you might
want to reduce this value to as little as 30 seconds.
Process Compact Laziness: As with every other aspect of computing, Murphy's
Law holds true for web serving. Sometimes a process can go horribly awry -
usually the result of a web browser crashing while somebody's looking at your
web site. This leaves a process trying to send a file to a client that doesn't
exist. The process won't terminate after the number of seconds specified in the
Process Compact Period field, because it's still doing something. Of course,
what it's doing will never be finished, since the client it was sending a file
to no longer exists. To keep these useless processes from accumulating and eating
up your computer's memory and processing resources, Savant has a special watchdog
process that checks every process to make sure it's doing something useful. If a
process isn't doing something useful, the watchdog process terminates it. This
field lets you set how often the watchdog process checks every process to make
sure they're all being well behaved. Time to whip out the calculators:
Process Compact Period x Process Compact Laziness = # of seconds the watchdog
process checks every process. The default values for these two fields send the
watchdog process out every 10 minutes. If most of the traffic to your web site
is via dial-up services that have a tendency to disconnect users, you might want
to decrease this value so these useless processes are terminated more often.
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