Hardening Apache

[MatthewJ]

I have apache setup on my linux box. My box is a very high end machine, but it only takes 10-15 users to slow down apache to a crawl.

Can anyone point me to some documentation on how to configure apache properly so it can handle many users ?

Thanks.

-Matthew

[jdMorgan]

It's impossible to say without knowing what the problem is. I mean, if this box is in your house and you're trying to serve requests through an ADSL broadband connection, then you might want to look up what the "A" in "ADSL" means (and review your ISP's terms of service as well).

If your box is co-located in a facility that has a direct fiber-optic backbone connection, then the problem may be with the applications you're hosting -- Are you using a CMS with a huge database? If so, is the DB query code optimized or just something that someone hacked-out over a weekend?

Or maybe the site's coded in PHP, but not very well coded in PHP...

Out-of-the-box with the Apache-supplied config files, you should not have a problem hosting a 'typical' site with only 15 users --or even 1500 users-- on an un-shared high-end machine. But the nature of this site and it's users, and how they might differ from 'typical' is not at all clear.

Apache provides several tutorials for configuring Apache servers, and there are hundreds to be found using search engines.

Jim