Problems with tuning Apache

1. What sort of things can I do to "tune" SWS?

Probably the best single source of information on this topic is by Dan Kegel. He keeps this information at his Cal Tech alumni web site. Here's the URL:

http://alumnus.caltech.edu/~dank/fixing-overloaded-web-server.html

The Apache project also has some decent information on this topic.

http://www.apache.org/docs/misc/perf-tuning.html

Additional sites are linked from both of these URL's. You may spend several hours reading if you desire!

2. How do I turn off reverse lookups? It's enabled and I think it's slowing my box down.

This is usually a good idea as it is a performance drain and there are tools to convert your logs after the fact! Just look for this line in your httpd.conf:

HostnameLookups on

and change "on" to off.

There after if you need to resolve hostnames for your log analysis tools you can use logresolve which comes with Apache and SWS.

3. But what if I need hostnames for one of my CGI scripts?

This configuration should help you:

HostnameLookups off

HostnameLookups on
</Files>

Only files which match the description used will use hostname lookups everything else will happily move along by only logging the ip of the requestor. As an alternative to this you could always resolve the hostname in your CGI script .