Tux

Tux, the Red Hat Content Accelerator, is a static-content Web server designed to be run very fast from within the Linux kernel. In effect, it runs in kernel space, making response times much faster than standard user-space Web servers like Apache. As a kernel-space server, Tux can handle static content such as images very efficiently. At the same time, it can coordinate with a user-space Web server, like Apache, to provide the dynamic content, like CGI programs. Tux can even make use of a cache to hold previously generated dynamic content, using it as if it were static. The ability to coordinate with a user-space Web server lets you use Tux as your primary Web server. Anything that Tux cannot handle, it will pass off to the user-space Web server.

Note

Tux is freely distributed under the GNU Public License and is included with many distributions.

The Tux configuration file is located in /proc/sys/net/tux. Here you enter parameters such as serverport, max_doc_size, and logfile (check the Tux reference manual at www.redhat.com/support/manuals for a detailed listing). Defaults are already entered. serverport, clientport, and documentroot are required parameters that must be set. serverport is the port Tux will use—80 if it is the primary Web server. clientport is the port used by the user-space Web server Tux coordinates with, like Apache. documentroot specifies the root directory for your Web documents (/var/www/html on Red Hat).

Ideally, Tux is run as the primary Web server and Apache as the secondary Web server. To configure Apache to run with Tux, the port entry in the Apache httpd.conf file needs to be changed from 80 to 8080:

Port 8080

You can start, stop, and restart the server with the service command and the /etc/rd.d/init.d/tux script. Several parameters like DOCROOT can be specified as arguments to this Tux command. You can enter them in the /etc/sysconfig/tux file.

Note

You can also run Tux as an FTP server. In the /proc/sys/net/tux directory, you change the contents of the file serverport to 21, application_protocol to 1, and nonagle to 0, and then restart Tux. Use the generatetuxlist command in the document root directory to generate FTP directory listings.