@@ -1,39 +1,20 @@ # A Web Server Called *Ebb* Ebb aims to be a small and fast web server specifically for hosting -web frameworks like Rails, Merb, and in the future Django. +dynamic web applications. It is not meant to be a full featured web server +like Lighttpd, Apache, or Nginx. Rather it should be used in multiplicity +behind a load balancer and a front-end server. It is not meant to serve static files in production. -It is not meant to be a full featured web server like Lighttpd, Apache, or -Nginx. Rather it should be used in multiplicity behind a load balancer and a -front-end server. It is not meant to serve static files in production. +At one level Ebb is a minimalist C library that ties together the +[Mongrel state machine](http://mongrel.rubyforge.org/browser/tags/rel_1-0-1/ext/http11/http11_parser.rl) +and [libev](http://software.schmorp.de/pkg/libev.html) event loop. One can use +this library to drive a web application written in C. (Perhaps for embedded +devices?) However, most people will be interested in the binding of this +library to the Ruby programming language. The binding provides a +[Rack](http://rack.rubyforge.org/) server interface that allows it to host +Rails, Merb, or other frameworks. -## Design - -The design is similar to the [Evented -Mongrel](http://swiftiply.swiftcore.org/mongrel.html) web server; except -instead of using [EventMachine](http://rubyeventmachine.com/) to drive -network interactions, the Ebb web server handles sockets directly in C and -employs the use of the [libev](http://software.schmorp.de/pkg/libev.html) -event loop. - -Connections are processed as follows: - -1. libev loops and waits for incoming connections. - -2. When Ebb receives a connection, it passes the request into the - [mongrel state machine](http://mongrel.rubyforge.org/browser/tags/rel_1-0-1/ext/http11/http11_parser.rl) - which securely parses the headers. - -3. When the request is complete, Ebb passes the information to a user - supplied callback. - -4. The Ruby binding supplying this callback transforms the - request into a [Rack](http://rack.rubyforge.org/) compatible `env` hash - and passes it on a Rack adapter. - -Because Ebb is written mostly in C, other language bindings can be added to -make it useful to Non-Ruby frameworks. For example, a Python WSGI interface is -forthcoming. +A Python-WSGI binding is under development. ## Install @@ -70,40 +51,24 @@ When using `ebb_rails` from monit, the monitrc entry might look like this: To use Ebb with a different framework you will have to do a small amount of hacking at the moment! :) -## Why? - -Because by building the server in C one is able to side-step the -limitations on speed of many scripting languages. Inefficiencies are okay -for quick and beautiful code, but for production web servers that might handle -thousands of requests a second, an attempt should be made to be as efficient -as possible in processing connections. - -Following are some benchmarks. Please take these measurements with a grain of -salt. Benchmarks like these are notorious for presenting an inaccurate or -highly slanted view of how software performs. These are tests using a very -simple Rack applications, not with Ruby-on-Rails. The code for these can be -found in the `benchmark` directory. - - - -This shows how the web servers perform with respect to throughput (using a -simple Rack application). Concurrency is at 50 clients. - - +## Speed -A simple concurrent clients benchmark serving a *hello world* page. +Because Ebb-Ruby handles most of the processing in C, it is able to do work +often times more efficiently than other Ruby language web servers. - + -Ebb processes uploads before handing it over to the web application. This -allows Ebb to continue to process other clients while the upload is in -progress. The cliff at 40k here is because Ebb's internal request -buffer is set at 40 kilobytes before it writes to file. +Ebb-Ruby can handle threaded processing better than the other 'evented' +servers. This won't be of any benefit to Rails applications because Rails +places a lock around each request that wouldn't allow concurrent processing +anyway. In Merb, for example, Ebb's thread handling will allow Ebb instances +to handle larger loads. [More](http://four.livejournal.com/848525.html) ## Contributions Contributions (patches, criticism, advice) are very welcome! -All should be posted to http://groups.google.com/group/ebbebb or emailed to me. +Please send all to to +[the mailing list](http://groups.google.com/group/ebbebb). The source code is hosted [github](http://github.com/ry/ebb/tree/master). It can be retrieved README @@ -9,7 +9,7 @@ body { color: #444130; font-family: bell mt,georgia,helvetica; line-height: 15pt; - font-size: 14pt; + font-size: 13pt; margin: 0; } @@ -21,7 +21,7 @@ h1, h2, h3, h4 { pre, code { font-family: Courier; - font-size: 12pt; + font-size: 11pt; overflow: auto; } @@ -33,7 +33,7 @@ a { color: #E4AC3D; } #content { margin: 1em auto ; - max-width: 30em; + max-width: 35em; } ol, ul { padding-left: 0; } site/style.css 0a8a18b02139cfad50d1d7c89b1b1f49ab687fbd Ryan Dahl ry@lakshmi.local http://github.com/ry/ebb/commit/86b056ad218153dd3c39f1132e95361ac4f7f9b1 86b056ad218153dd3c39f1132e95361ac4f7f9b1 2008-03-17T18:12:33-07:00 2008-03-17T18:12:33-07:00 site update d0447dd154c7789869bf94d6b61eddedc7037fcf Ryan Dahl ry@lakshmi.local