What is the best minimal http server? [closed]

If I want to serve some static content over http from Ubuntu, with an emphasis on security and efficiency (at low-moderate load), what's the best choice?

3 Answers

We are using micro-httpd for this purpose.

It is very small and started by inetd for every single request, so it is only good for low-load environments, but it does what we need it do to. The only configuration options are the directory to be served and the port to listen on. For SSL/HTTPS support, stunnel would be used (a wrapper between unencrypted and ssl-encrypted connections).

Some more information from the man page:

It implements all the basic features of an HTTP server, including:

• Security against ".." filename snooping.
• The common MIME types.
• Trailing-slash redirection.
• index.html
• Directory listings.

Apache is very secure and extremely efficient at serving static content, especially at low-to-moderate load. It is also only an apt-get away, no additional configuration needed.

Is there anything which makes you to look for another web server?

0

Very common are Lighttpd and Nginx. They are very alike and bear similar features and both support PHP if needed. Lighttpd runs as a single process but with a single thread and non-blocking I/O, where as Nginx works as one master process but delegates its work unto worker processes.