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Reply-To: "Danie Qian" <daniel@bestningning.com>
From: "Danie Qian" <daniel@bestningning.com>
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Subject: Re: load data at server startup - is ap_hook_post_config() the right
 place?
Date: Fri, 23 Mar 2007 13:01:50 -0400
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----- Original Message ----- 
From: "David Wortham" <djwortham@gmail.com>
To: <modules-dev@httpd.apache.org>; "Danie Qian" <daniel@bestningning.com>
Sent: Friday, March 23, 2007 11:34 AM
Subject: Re: load data at server startup - is ap_hook_post_config() the 
right place?


> Daniel,
>   I believe (I am a module programmer with only novice Apache API
> experience) that there are quite a few server configs created.
>
>   From my experiments with my module, there appear to be at least two
> running all the time (what appears to be a "global" server config and one
> server config for every virtualhost defined in httpd.conf and other config
> files).
>
>   Also, I would guess that each child process has their own copy of the
> server configs.
> I believe this because every time a server_config_merge function is 
> called,
> the server config is edited.
> The server_config_merge function is run at server startup (based on
> httpd.conf settings) and again at the beginning of a request (when 
> .htaccess
> files are parsed... although I am not sure why).
> AFAIK, every time a "variable" in the parent process is written to by a
> child process, the child process is given a copy of the parent's variable
> and only that copy (in the child process) is edited.
> By that logic, I would think that not only do you potentially get one
> server_config struct per (child process which writes to the server 
> config),
> but each server_config_struct is independently modified by each child
> process (on potentially different).
>
> Maybe this page can shed some light on your questions:
> http://www.fmc-modeling.org/projects/apache/html/3_3Extending_Apache.html
>
>
> Regards,
> Dave
>
>
> -- 
> David Wortham
> Senior Web Applications Developer
> Unspam Technologies, Inc.
> 1901 Prospector Dr. #30
> Park City, UT 84060
> (435) 513-0672
>
>
> On 3/22/07, Danie Qian <daniel@bestningning.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: "Dumindu Perera" <pallewela@gmail.com>
>> To: <modules-dev@httpd.apache.org>; "Danie Qian" 
>> <daniel@bestningning.com>
>> Sent: Thursday, March 22, 2007 1:18 PM
>> Subject: Re: load data at server startup - is ap_hook_post_config() the
>> right place?
>>
>> Thanks for replying. Does every child process has one copy of the server
>> config or is there only one copy in the whole server memory space? I dont
>> want every child to have a copy as the config data is quite big in my
>> case.
>>
>> Best Regards,
>> Daniel
>>
>>
>

Hi Dave,

I think you are right after piecing together all the information I gathered 
from various places. As soon as a child process modify the data in the 
server config created by the parent server, the child gets a copy of it. 
This is ok if the server config is only a few httpd.conf directives but in 
my case it would be very inefficient as the table to be put in server config 
can grow to a few hundred Kilobytes. At this point child processes arent 
required to dynamically change anything in the server config but I dont feel 
comfortable to put in it being aware of the above fact.
Someone in the forum mentioned about mutex for this situaction. Now i have 
one question: mutex is a multithread thing but if I run apache in 
single-thread mode like prefork is it still the best solution?

Thanks,
Daniel