5 ms·

How to set up a Raspberry Pi Web Server

50 points by JeremyMorgan 14y ago

thenomad 14y ago
Neat! I'm very interested to see some benchmarks for this. Given Nginx is pretty minimal in its system load (I think) might it actually be possible to run a reasonable-sized website off one of these servers?
- agumonkey 14y ago
  All network interfaces go through the usb stack, a few monthes ago there were issues with usb polling (usb driver being in the closed-source firmware iirc) eating cpu cycles. I don't know if it's been solved since.
  - grannyg00se 14y ago
    Seems like moving to USB 3.0 would be a huge overall gain to the system. Is there some other component that would prevent full USB 3.0 speed?
    - voltagex_ 14y ago
      I think USB 3 is prohibitively expensive at the moment. Power may be an issue there too - you barely get 200mW out of the USB ports by the time the system itself is powered.
    - agumonkey 14y ago
      I'm not knowledgeable but I can only recall one SoC providing usb3.0, mind you those things are for embedded/phone devices, thus usb3 looks like a costly overkill. I'm all for it but that's hardly a motivation for them. usb2 would be fine if it was a sane implementation but AFAIK the rpi SoC was made for ~video-only appliances where there's close to no IO or cpu processing and thus the usb stack firmware code do some bold decisions that induce a nice penalty on usb/cpu. It's possible that they released a new version since (my data dates from a few monthes ago) or that someone published a binary patch to improve the situation.
- sliverstorm 14y ago
  Whether or not you're hosting static content would probably play a big factor. I've got one, and while it is fully functional it is not fast. The network runs over USB, so bandwidth is limited, and latency is never great. Content is stored on the SD card, which is also over USB. Seek times are good but bandwidth is poor. Me, I'm hoping for a rev2 wherein USB is not used for the system bus and the core is ARMv7 or better. That, or possibly just use NetBSD once it's been fully ported. I've had great luck with BSDs on super-weak hardware.
  - coob 14y ago
    The models with 512MB RAM could store a small site on a ramdisk.
- ChuckMcM 14y ago
  You would have to define 'reasonable sized' but I suspect the answer is yes. If you mount the web files over the network (I use NFS v3) you can run a very nice Nginx web server instance and a full stack. Not surprisingly, one of the 'bottlenecks' in RasPi is the SD card so using network mounted files is quite a bit faster in my experience.
- EwanToo 14y ago
  I did some benchmarks on a beaglebone ARM board using nginx running wordpress here http://www.ewanleith.com/blog/1066/high-performance-wordpress-on-arm http://www.ewanleith.com/blog/1066/high-performance-wordpres... But fundamentally, IO is crippled on these kind of devices for performance stuff
- luser001 14y ago
  I did some benchmarking to find the CPU overhead of data transfer. Here is the draft of what I found. https://gist.github.com/4144871 https://gist.github.com/4144871 I was able to saturate a 100 Mbps LAN link with netcat. IIRC CPU was at 70%.
shy_coder 14y ago
Something like nginx, monkey or pancake would be a much better option for a webserver/pi. http://nginx.org/ http://nginx.org/ http://monkey-project.com/ http://monkey-project.com/ http://pancakehttp.net/ http://pancakehttp.net/
jgrahamc 14y ago
I have a Raspberry Pi attached to my home network with one of these tiny WiFi adapters (http://www.expansys.com/edimax-wi-fi-150mbps-mini-usb-202741/ http://www.expansys.com/edimax-wi-fi-150mbps-mini-usb-202741...). It's in a small white box (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Raspberry-Pi-case-professional-injection/dp/B0097NPQ8W/ http://www.amazon.co.uk/Raspberry-Pi-case-professional-injec...) and attached to the wall. It's completely unobtrusive, looks like it might be something to do with the phones.
- Achshar 14y ago
  What do you use it for?
  - jgrahamc 14y ago
    It's running OpenVPN so I get VPN access to my home.
- joezydeco 14y ago
  The USB/Wifi dongle is interesting. I don't know much about this flavor of adapter, were the drivers already in the kernel? Any problems getting it running?
  - jgrahamc 14y ago
    Yes, I had no problem configuring it at all. It just came up and a quick change to the config for my network and key and it was done.
  - luser001 14y ago
    The latest Raspbian seems to support it out of the box. It was pretty painless for me.
  - voltagex_ 14y ago
    From memory these sticks are either a Ralink or Realtek chipset and are supported by all recent kernels.
- 14y ago

50 points by JeremyMorgan 14y ago

Neat! I'm very interested to see some benchmarks for this. Given Nginx is pretty minimal in its system load (I think) might it actually be possible to run a reasonable-sized website off one of these servers?

agumonkey 14y ago
All network interfaces go through the usb stack, a few monthes ago there were issues with usb polling (usb driver being in the closed-source firmware iirc) eating cpu cycles. I don't know if it's been solved since.
- grannyg00se 14y ago
  Seems like moving to USB 3.0 would be a huge overall gain to the system. Is there some other component that would prevent full USB 3.0 speed?
  - voltagex_ 14y ago
    I think USB 3 is prohibitively expensive at the moment. Power may be an issue there too - you barely get 200mW out of the USB ports by the time the system itself is powered.
  - agumonkey 14y ago
    I'm not knowledgeable but I can only recall one SoC providing usb3.0, mind you those things are for embedded/phone devices, thus usb3 looks like a costly overkill. I'm all for it but that's hardly a motivation for them. usb2 would be fine if it was a sane implementation but AFAIK the rpi SoC was made for ~video-only appliances where there's close to no IO or cpu processing and thus the usb stack firmware code do some bold decisions that induce a nice penalty on usb/cpu. It's possible that they released a new version since (my data dates from a few monthes ago) or that someone published a binary patch to improve the situation.
sliverstorm 14y ago
Whether or not you're hosting static content would probably play a big factor. I've got one, and while it is fully functional it is not fast. The network runs over USB, so bandwidth is limited, and latency is never great. Content is stored on the SD card, which is also over USB. Seek times are good but bandwidth is poor. Me, I'm hoping for a rev2 wherein USB is not used for the system bus and the core is ARMv7 or better. That, or possibly just use NetBSD once it's been fully ported. I've had great luck with BSDs on super-weak hardware.
- coob 14y ago
  The models with 512MB RAM could store a small site on a ramdisk.
ChuckMcM 14y ago
You would have to define 'reasonable sized' but I suspect the answer is yes. If you mount the web files over the network (I use NFS v3) you can run a very nice Nginx web server instance and a full stack. Not surprisingly, one of the 'bottlenecks' in RasPi is the SD card so using network mounted files is quite a bit faster in my experience.
EwanToo 14y ago
I did some benchmarks on a beaglebone ARM board using nginx running wordpress here http://www.ewanleith.com/blog/1066/high-performance-wordpress-on-arm http://www.ewanleith.com/blog/1066/high-performance-wordpres... But fundamentally, IO is crippled on these kind of devices for performance stuff
luser001 14y ago
I did some benchmarking to find the CPU overhead of data transfer. Here is the draft of what I found. https://gist.github.com/4144871 https://gist.github.com/4144871 I was able to saturate a 100 Mbps LAN link with netcat. IIRC CPU was at 70%.

shy_coder 14y ago

Something like nginx, monkey or pancake would be a much better option for a webserver/pi. http://nginx.org/ http://nginx.org/ http://monkey-project.com/ http://monkey-project.com/ http://pancakehttp.net/ http://pancakehttp.net/

jgrahamc 14y ago

I have a Raspberry Pi attached to my home network with one of these tiny WiFi adapters (http://www.expansys.com/edimax-wi-fi-150mbps-mini-usb-202741/ http://www.expansys.com/edimax-wi-fi-150mbps-mini-usb-202741...). It's in a small white box (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Raspberry-Pi-case-professional-injection/dp/B0097NPQ8W/ http://www.amazon.co.uk/Raspberry-Pi-case-professional-injec...) and attached to the wall. It's completely unobtrusive, looks like it might be something to do with the phones.

Achshar 14y ago
What do you use it for?
- jgrahamc 14y ago
  It's running OpenVPN so I get VPN access to my home.
joezydeco 14y ago
The USB/Wifi dongle is interesting. I don't know much about this flavor of adapter, were the drivers already in the kernel? Any problems getting it running?
- jgrahamc 14y ago
  Yes, I had no problem configuring it at all. It just came up and a quick change to the config for my network and key and it was done.
- luser001 14y ago
  The latest Raspbian seems to support it out of the box. It was pretty painless for me.
- voltagex_ 14y ago
  From memory these sticks are either a Ralink or Realtek chipset and are supported by all recent kernels.
14y ago