How to install Lighttpd to proxy apache and setup for streaming

[vinayakk]

Lighttpd is a free web server designed for speed, with all the essential functions of a web server.  It has low memory footprint as compared to other web servers and small CPU load and speed optimizations  make lighttpd suitable for servers that are suffering load problems, or for serving static media separately from dynamic content.

We can now setup lighttpd for apache proxy.

yum install lighttpd & also install mod_flv_streaming

To compile from source code see the link :- http://thelinuxguru.blogspot.in/2008/10/how-to-compile-lighttpd-on-centos.html

vim /etc/lighttpd/lighttpd.conf

change lighttpd port to 81

server.port = 81
server.use-ipv6 = “disable”

server.username  = “nobody”
server.groupname = “nobody”

touch /var/log/lighttpd/error.log
touch /var/log/lighttpd/access.log

chown -R nobody.nobody /var/log/lighttpd

/etc/init.d/lighttpd restart


When you get restart error like this errors then check with log file permissions.

Starting lighttpd: (log.c.118) opening errorlog ‘/var/log/lighttpd/error.log’ failed: Permission denied



vim /etc/lighttpd/modules.conf

make sure modules are including these for flv steaming…

include “conf.d/simple_vhost.conf”
include “conf.d/flv_streaming.conf”

vim conf.d/simple_vhost.conf

example entry

$HTTP["host"] != “^(footage.example\.info)$” {
simple-vhost.server-root = “/home/username/public_html/”
simple-vhost.default-host = “footage.example.info”
simple-vhost.document-root = “footage”
}

$HTTP["host"] =~ “(^|\.)footage.example\.info:81$” {
server.document-root = “/home/username/public_html/footage/”
}
$HTTP["host"] =~ “(^|\.)www.example2\.net:81$” {
server.document-root = “/home/username/public_html/footage/”
}
$HTTP["host"] =~ “(^|\.)example3\.info:81$” {
server.document-root = “/home/username/public_html/footage/”
}

Then enable steaming modules.

vim conf.d/flv_streaming.conf

server.modules += ( “mod_flv_streaming”)
flv-streaming.extensions = ( “.flv” )

Normally apache will running on port 80, these entries will redirect .flv extension to port 81. Add the following code in your apache configuration.

vim /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf

Add the following entries below domain config

ProxyPassReverse / http://%{HTTP_HOST}:81/
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond   %{REQUEST_URI} .*\.(gif|png|jpg|flv|mp4|mp3)$
RewriteRule ^/(.*) http://%{HTTP_HOST}:81/$1 [P]

Now restart apache webserver and check your lighttpd access logs /var/log/lighttpd/access.log.