3 ms·

Apparently whatever they use for web software can't cope with HN traffic, which is fitting the title perfectly.

gkya 13y ago
A program written in the rc shell.
mbillie1 13y ago
They have one of the funniest (irrelevant but still humorous) pages about Java as well: http://harmful.cat-v.org/software/java http://harmful.cat-v.org/software/java
- eekee 13y ago
  Amusing indeed. I'd forgotten about it. For those wanting to see it today: http://web.archive.org/web/20140209235144/http://harmful.cat-v.org/software/java http://web.archive.org/web/20140209235144/http://harmful.cat...
KhalilK 13y ago
Speaking of which, how much traffic HN would generate? Has it been measured?
- mschuster91 13y ago
  Shitloads. HN is iirc more "powerful" than slashdot when you're on the frontpage.
  - thejosh 13y ago
    Nothing compared to reddit though.
- edent 13y ago
  http://shkspr.mobi/blog/2012/11/whats-the-front-page-of-hackernews-worth/ http://shkspr.mobi/blog/2012/11/whats-the-front-page-of-hack... Articles on the front page receive roughly 700 page views per hour. Obviously, depends very much on time of day, attractiveness of the title etc.
  - bhaak 13y ago
    This would be a page view every 5 seconds. I can't image how you'd write a web server that couldn't cope with that low load (actually I can but not for a mostly static site like this). Even if we consider that it would be an additional page view every 5 seconds, this is barely believable that this would put the server under a stress load. Either this one is wildly more popular or maybe something else is going on as well. [1]
    - khm 13y ago
      Cat-v is under "page view every five seconds" load basically continually. You don't have to imagine how to write the web server, because the source is available for your perusal, in friendly, easy-to-read shell scripting. The site has trouble because we have devoted our meager resources to other tasks. If someone wants to donate beefier servers I'd gladly replace the aging, asthmatic machines that comprise 9cloud. It's been my experience, however, that people generally don't want to spend that thousand dollars.
    - edent 13y ago
      Remember, every page view also loads images, CSS, JavaScript, etc. So a single view can add up to a dozen hits. Depending on how powerful the machine is, how aggressively cached the content, and what else it is being used for, that can consume significant resources.
knowtheory 13y ago
It looks like they're serving off something called "rc": $ curl -I harmful.cat-v.org HTTP/1.1 200 OK Content-Type: text/html Server: rc-httpd Connection: close It is ironically listed in the "Less harmful alternatives" and links to a page hosted on itself: http://rc.cat-v.org/ http://rc.cat-v.org/ Edit: Sorry my bad, `rc` appears to be part of Plan9 (see: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Mc7xQBU5RogJ:man.cat-v.org/plan_9/1/rc+&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Mc7xQBU... ). Here's the cache link to rc-httpd which seems to be the thing that's buckling under the load: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:3ahE0vdOUpUJ:werc.cat-v.org/docs/web-server-setup/plan-9-rc-httpd+&cd=3&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:3ahE0vd...
- eekee 13y ago
  aI wrote rc-httpd; it's a CGI-capable web server written in rc shell script. I started the project with the idea that I could probably write a whole web server from scratch, learning the shell tools ant HTTP protocol as I went, in less time and effort than learning how to configure Apache 2.2. I reckon I was just-about right. ;) I wrote it for myself, and I never thought it would need to handle the kind of traffic cat-v.org gets. werc (the CMS for cat-v.org) is also written in rc shell. It's bigger and does more work than rc-httpd, but rc-httpd always seems to be the point of failure. I suspect it fails where I used awk to parse the HTTP headers; plan 9's awk is very slow. What's amusingly ironic, considering the content of the site, is werc and rc-httpd perform well on Linux and only Linux. The two together have been used on Linux of course, OpenBSD, Mac OS X, and the 9front fork of Plan 9; Linux is the only one where they perform well. It seems Linux the only operating system optimized for shell script performance, and yes, I laugh every time I say "optimized for shell script performance!" On 9front werc and rc-httpd perform a role beyond serving pages: they exercise the system, and have exposed some nasty bugs. They were first used when 9front had barely diverged from Bell Labs Plan 9. Back then the system could barely handle the load of a far less trafficked site than cat-v.org. It wasn't just rc-httpd, the whole system would go down when just a few pages were loaded at once! 9front has come far enough that it's serving cat-v.org today, but it still has some way to go. werc and rc-httpd also still have some way to go, today there was talk of making werc cache pages which would help a lot, and I plan to improve rc-httpd a bit too, but I'll only take it so far. I don't really think 9front would be improved by prioritizing shell script performance. :D I might try to write a web server in C, I think I could do it now, or there was mention of maybe porting Varnish, too. I've never looked at Varnish... might do that tonight. Trailing thought: If I do write a web server, I don't think I'll take it as far as Tom Duff did. Tom Duff's httpd keeps all the web pages in the executable; changing a page means recompiling! ... and having written all that, can I say how much I HATE form cookie timeouts?
khm 13y ago
cat-v.org runs werc[1], a minimalist web not-framework written by Uriel in the rc shell[2], served by rc-httpd[3], a web daemon also written in the rc shell, by eekee. The site is served by a single plan 9 virtual machine hosted by myself and maintained by stanley lieber. Further website optimization is not particularly high on our to-do list. Anyone who wants to donate CDN services or front-end varnish machines is welcome to get in touch. [1] http://werc.cat-v.org/ http://werc.cat-v.org/ [2] http://doc.cat-v.org/plan_9/4th_edition/papers/rc‎ http://doc.cat-v.org/plan_9/4th_edition/papers/rc‎ [3] http://man.cat-v.org/9front/8/rc-httpd http://man.cat-v.org/9front/8/rc-httpd

gkya 13y ago

A program written in the rc shell.

They have one of the funniest (irrelevant but still humorous) pages about Java as well: http://harmful.cat-v.org/software/java http://harmful.cat-v.org/software/java

eekee 13y ago
Amusing indeed. I'd forgotten about it. For those wanting to see it today: http://web.archive.org/web/20140209235144/http://harmful.cat-v.org/software/java http://web.archive.org/web/20140209235144/http://harmful.cat...

KhalilK 13y ago

Speaking of which, how much traffic HN would generate? Has it been measured?

mschuster91 13y ago
Shitloads. HN is iirc more "powerful" than slashdot when you're on the frontpage.
- thejosh 13y ago
  Nothing compared to reddit though.
edent 13y ago
http://shkspr.mobi/blog/2012/11/whats-the-front-page-of-hackernews-worth/ http://shkspr.mobi/blog/2012/11/whats-the-front-page-of-hack... Articles on the front page receive roughly 700 page views per hour. Obviously, depends very much on time of day, attractiveness of the title etc.
- bhaak 13y ago
  This would be a page view every 5 seconds. I can't image how you'd write a web server that couldn't cope with that low load (actually I can but not for a mostly static site like this). Even if we consider that it would be an additional page view every 5 seconds, this is barely believable that this would put the server under a stress load. Either this one is wildly more popular or maybe something else is going on as well. [1]
  - khm 13y ago
    Cat-v is under "page view every five seconds" load basically continually. You don't have to imagine how to write the web server, because the source is available for your perusal, in friendly, easy-to-read shell scripting. The site has trouble because we have devoted our meager resources to other tasks. If someone wants to donate beefier servers I'd gladly replace the aging, asthmatic machines that comprise 9cloud. It's been my experience, however, that people generally don't want to spend that thousand dollars.
  - edent 13y ago
    Remember, every page view also loads images, CSS, JavaScript, etc. So a single view can add up to a dozen hits. Depending on how powerful the machine is, how aggressively cached the content, and what else it is being used for, that can consume significant resources.

knowtheory 13y ago

It looks like they're serving off something called "rc": $ curl -I harmful.cat-v.org HTTP/1.1 200 OK Content-Type: text/html Server: rc-httpd Connection: close It is ironically listed in the "Less harmful alternatives" and links to a page hosted on itself: http://rc.cat-v.org/ http://rc.cat-v.org/ Edit: Sorry my bad, `rc` appears to be part of Plan9 (see: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Mc7xQBU5RogJ:man.cat-v.org/plan_9/1/rc+&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Mc7xQBU... ). Here's the cache link to rc-httpd which seems to be the thing that's buckling under the load: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:3ahE0vdOUpUJ:werc.cat-v.org/docs/web-server-setup/plan-9-rc-httpd+&cd=3&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:3ahE0vd...

eekee 13y ago
aI wrote rc-httpd; it's a CGI-capable web server written in rc shell script. I started the project with the idea that I could probably write a whole web server from scratch, learning the shell tools ant HTTP protocol as I went, in less time and effort than learning how to configure Apache 2.2. I reckon I was just-about right. ;) I wrote it for myself, and I never thought it would need to handle the kind of traffic cat-v.org gets. werc (the CMS for cat-v.org) is also written in rc shell. It's bigger and does more work than rc-httpd, but rc-httpd always seems to be the point of failure. I suspect it fails where I used awk to parse the HTTP headers; plan 9's awk is very slow. What's amusingly ironic, considering the content of the site, is werc and rc-httpd perform well on Linux and only Linux. The two together have been used on Linux of course, OpenBSD, Mac OS X, and the 9front fork of Plan 9; Linux is the only one where they perform well. It seems Linux the only operating system optimized for shell script performance, and yes, I laugh every time I say "optimized for shell script performance!" On 9front werc and rc-httpd perform a role beyond serving pages: they exercise the system, and have exposed some nasty bugs. They were first used when 9front had barely diverged from Bell Labs Plan 9. Back then the system could barely handle the load of a far less trafficked site than cat-v.org. It wasn't just rc-httpd, the whole system would go down when just a few pages were loaded at once! 9front has come far enough that it's serving cat-v.org today, but it still has some way to go. werc and rc-httpd also still have some way to go, today there was talk of making werc cache pages which would help a lot, and I plan to improve rc-httpd a bit too, but I'll only take it so far. I don't really think 9front would be improved by prioritizing shell script performance. :D I might try to write a web server in C, I think I could do it now, or there was mention of maybe porting Varnish, too. I've never looked at Varnish... might do that tonight. Trailing thought: If I do write a web server, I don't think I'll take it as far as Tom Duff did. Tom Duff's httpd keeps all the web pages in the executable; changing a page means recompiling! ... and having written all that, can I say how much I HATE form cookie timeouts?

khm 13y ago

cat-v.org runs werc[1], a minimalist web not-framework written by Uriel in the rc shell[2], served by rc-httpd[3], a web daemon also written in the rc shell, by eekee. The site is served by a single plan 9 virtual machine hosted by myself and maintained by stanley lieber. Further website optimization is not particularly high on our to-do list. Anyone who wants to donate CDN services or front-end varnish machines is welcome to get in touch. [1] http://werc.cat-v.org/ http://werc.cat-v.org/ [2] http://doc.cat-v.org/plan_9/4th_edition/papers/rc‎ http://doc.cat-v.org/plan_9/4th_edition/papers/rc‎ [3] http://man.cat-v.org/9front/8/rc-httpd http://man.cat-v.org/9front/8/rc-httpd