How can I change from prefork to worker MPM on CentOS 64bit?

Question

I'm running CentOS 64 bit, and jsut found out I am running prefork MPM on my dual quad xeon. I was told worker will give me lower memory usage, and higher performance, since I run a very high traffic website.

If this is true, how do I do it?

Thank you

Answer 1

Edit: /etc/sysconfig/httpd

Uncomment:

HTTPD=/usr/sbin/httpd.worker

Restart, voila!

Answer 2

It might be true, the only real way to find out is to test.

This is a compile time option so that would require a recompile of apache. Download the srpm, install it, modify the source, create a patch file, apply the patch file in the .spec file, rebuild the RPM, install the RPM. (That's a very quick description for a somewhat longer process.) Here is a more complete example.

Or you could just download the source, compile it, and install it. Which might be a better choice for testing purposes. I'd go the extra mile and create the RPM. You always want to create a re-producible environment, especially in a very high traffic situation.