Monthly Archives: September 2007

Maximum Connections for Tomcat, Apache and Comet

Posted on September 18, 2007 by Zhou Renjian

I struggled to find out why my server broke down frequently these days. And I think I found it.

My Apache HTTP server was configured with MaxClients at 50, the default AJP connector’s connections number was about 15, and the Tomcat’s maxThreads was 150. So the bottleneck would be AJP connector, especially all my connection-heavy Comet application was serving about 20 Gtalk/MSNLive simultaneous connections. It is obviously it will break down the servers. And after switching my Gtalk/MSNLive into query modes, it still broke down the server. The reason may be the bottleneck of Apache HTTP server’s 50 maximum connections.

I updated all the configuration to 256 for maximum simultaneous connections. Hope server won’t break down for Comet application from now on.

For more about extreme maximum simultaneous connections, please read articles:
http://jha.rajeev.googlepages.com/web2push
http://www.stdlib.net/~colmmacc/Apachecon-EU2005/scaling-apache-handout.pdf

http.conf

<IfModule prefork.c>
#StartServers 1
#MinSpareServers 1
#MaxSpareServers 5
StartServers 3
MinSpareServers 5
MaxSpareServers 10
#ServerLimit 50
ServerLimit 256
#MaxClients 50
MaxClients 256
MaxRequestsPerChild 4000
</IfModule>

server.xml

<!-- Define an AJP 1.3 Connector on port 8009 -->
<Connector port="8009"
maxThreads="256" minSpareThreads="25" maxSpareThreads="75"
enableLookups="false" protocol="AJP/1.3" />

Posted in Comet, httpd, Tomcat | Comments Off on Maximum Connections for Tomcat, Apache and Comet

How To Replace “/” With “” in .bat File

Posted on September 18, 2007 by Zhou Renjian

Here is an example to replace string with a different delimiter in Windows’ *.bat file.

for /f "tokens=1-15 delims=/" %%i in ("%1") do (
set _X1_=%%i
set _X2_=%%j
set _X3_=%%k
set _X4_=%%l
set _X5_=%%m
set _X6_=%%n
set _X7_=%%o
set _X8_=%%p
set _X9_=%%q
set _XA_=%%r
set _XB_=%%s
set _XC_=%%t
set _XD_=%%u
set _XE_=%%v
set _XF_=%%w)
set _XPATH_=%_X1_%
if not "%_X2_%" == "" set _XPATH_=%_XPATH_%\%_X2_%
if not "%_X3_%" == "" set _XPATH_=%_XPATH_%\%_X3_%
if not "%_X4_%" == "" set _XPATH_=%_XPATH_%\%_X4_%
if not "%_X5_%" == "" set _XPATH_=%_XPATH_%\%_X5_%
if not "%_X6_%" == "" set _XPATH_=%_XPATH_%\%_X6_%
if not "%_X7_%" == "" set _XPATH_=%_XPATH_%\%_X7_%
if not "%_X8_%" == "" set _XPATH_=%_XPATH_%\%_X8_%
if not "%_X9_%" == "" set _XPATH_=%_XPATH_%\%_X9_%
if not "%_XA_%" == "" set _XPATH_=%_XPATH_%\%_XA_%
if not "%_XB_%" == "" set _XPATH_=%_XPATH_%\%_XB_%
if not "%_XC_%" == "" set _XPATH_=%_XPATH_%\%_XC_%
if not "%_XD_%" == "" set _XPATH_=%_XPATH_%\%_XD_%
if not "%_XE_%" == "" set _XPATH_=%_XPATH_%\%_XE_%
if not "%_XF_%" == "" set _XPATH_=%_XPATH_%\%_XF_%

For more information, please key in “for /?” in command line.

Posted in Tricks | 1 Comment

Eclipse Plugin Central Website, Aweful Design!

Posted on September 5, 2007 by Zhou Renjian

If you ever visit Eclipse homepage http://www.eclipse.org/, you may notice that Eclipse homepage embeds plugin updates news from Eclipse Plugin Central (http://www.eclipseplugincentral.org/). If you try to visit the news by the given link, you may find that the page loads very very very SLOW!

Why? Open the the page source, you will see that it generates all 900+ plugins in the source! And the *.html file size is up to 200+k. And worse thing is that every page in Eclipse Plugin Central is the same with 200+k HTML file! Every page!

Besides it was once hacked by someone and its functions were buggy, such 200+k HTML pages design in Eclipse Plugin Central must be listed as #1 of aweful designs that I have ever seen.

Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off on Eclipse Plugin Central Website, Aweful Design!

AJP Connector Breaks Down Apache HTTP Server

Posted on September 1, 2007 by Zhou Renjian

Recently, my Apache HTTP server was broken down twice. The scenario was when visiting a page, it was just waiting there, blank. And I checked the server through SSH and saw that there was a lot (about 50) of inner 8009 connections. After restarting Apache HTTP Server and Tomcat Server, these connections decreased to less than 10 connections.

Yes, I deployed Comet applications “Google Talk in JavaScript” and “MSN Live in JavaScript” on my server. Here is the connection routine:

Client <-Kept Connection-> Apache HTTP Server <-AJP Connector (8009 Connection)-> Tomcat

When a user is connected, an AJP Connector is setup for him/her. The connection will not be tore down until the user disconnects from Gtalk or MSNLive service. So if there are more than 50 users online, there are no doubts that the server crashes.

To solve this problem, one solution would be not using Apache HTTP Server in the middle of Tomcat server and browser client. So there is no limitation on AJP connections.

And another solution would be monitoring user connections on Tomcat server side, and if there are more than 50 connections, try to switch application’s Comet-mode into Query-mode smartly.

Providing Comet applications need to solve a lot of unknown problems.

Posted in Comet, Google Talk, httpd, Tomcat | 1 Comment