1Catalyst::Manual::DeploUysmeerntC:o:nCAtaprtaiacblhuyets:et:d:m:oPMdea_rnpluearDllo:(c:3uD)meepnltoaytmieonnt::Apache::mod_perl(3)
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6 Catalyst::Manual::Deployment::Apache::mod_perl - Deploying Catalyst
7 with mod_perl
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10 The recommended method of deploying Catalyst applications is FastCGI.
11 In many cases, mod_perl is not the best solution, but we'll list some
12 pros and cons so you can decide for yourself.
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14 Pros
15 Speed
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17 mod_perl is fast, and your entire app will be loaded in memory within
18 each Apache process.
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20 Shared memory for multiple apps
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22 If you need to run several Catalyst apps on the same server, mod_perl
23 will share the memory for common modules.
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25 Cons
26 Memory usage
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28 Since your application is fully loaded in memory, every Apache process
29 will be rather large. This means a large Apache process will be tied
30 up while serving static files, large files, or dealing with slow
31 clients. For this reason, it is best to run a two-tiered web
32 architecture with a lightweight frontend server passing dynamic
33 requests to a large backend mod_perl server.
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35 Reloading
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37 Any changes made to the code of your app require a full restart of
38 Apache. Catalyst does not support Apache::Reload or StatINC. This is
39 another good reason to run a frontend web server where you can set up
40 an "ErrorDocument 502" page to report that your app is down for
41 maintenance.
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43 Cannot run multiple versions of the same app
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45 It is not possible to run two different versions of the same
46 application in the same Apache instance because the namespaces will
47 collide.
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49 Cannot run different versions of libraries
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51 If you have two different applications which run on the same machine,
52 and each application needs a different versions of a library, the only
53 way to do this is to have per-vhost perl interpreters (with different
54 library paths). This is entirely possible, but nullifies all the memory
55 sharing benefits that you get from having multiple applications sharing
56 the same interpreter.
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59 Now that we have that out of the way, let's talk about setting up
60 mod_perl to run a Catalyst app.
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62 2. Install Apache with mod_perl
63 Both Apache 1.3 and Apache 2 are supported, although Apache 2 is highly
64 recommended. With Apache 2, make sure you are using the prefork MPM
65 and not the worker MPM. The reason for this is that many Perl modules
66 are not thread-safe and may have problems running within the threaded
67 worker environment. Catalyst is thread-safe however, so if you know
68 what you're doing, you may be able to run using worker.
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70 In Debian, the following commands should get you going.
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72 apt-get install apache2-mpm-prefork
73 apt-get install libapache2-mod-perl2
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75 3. Configure your application
76 Every Catalyst application will automagically become a mod_perl handler
77 when run within mod_perl. This makes the configuration extremely easy.
78 Here is a basic Apache 2 configuration.
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80 PerlSwitches -I/var/www/MyApp/lib
81 PerlModule MyApp
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83 <Location />
84 SetHandler modperl
85 PerlResponseHandler MyApp
86 </Location>
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88 The most important line here is "PerlModule MyApp". This causes
89 mod_perl to preload your entire application into shared memory,
90 including all of your controller, model, and view classes and
91 configuration. If you have -Debug mode enabled, you will see the
92 startup output scroll by when you first start Apache.
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94 Also, there have been reports that the block above should instead be
95 (but this has not been confirmed):
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97 <Perl>
98 use lib '/var/www/MyApp/lib';
99 use MyApp;
100 </Perl>
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102 <Location />
103 SetHandler modperl
104 PerlResponseHandler MyApp
105 </Location>
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107 For an example Apache 1.3 configuration, please see the documentation
108 for Catalyst::Engine::Apache::MP13.
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110 Test It
111 That's it, your app is now a full-fledged mod_perl application! Try it
112 out by going to http://your.server.com/.
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115 Non-root location
116 You may not always want to run your app at the root of your server or
117 virtual host. In this case, it's a simple change to run at any non-
118 root location of your choice.
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120 <Location /myapp>
121 SetHandler modperl
122 PerlResponseHandler MyApp
123 </Location>
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125 When running this way, it is best to make use of the "uri_for" method
126 in Catalyst for constructing correct links.
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128 Static file handling
129 Static files can be served directly by Apache for a performance boost.
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131 DocumentRoot /var/www/MyApp/root
132 <Location /static>
133 SetHandler default-handler
134 </Location>
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136 This will let all files within root/static be handled directly by
137 Apache. In a two-tiered setup, the frontend server should handle
138 static files. The configuration to do this on the frontend will vary.
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140 Note the path of the application needs to be stated explicitly in the
141 web server configuration for this recipes.
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144 Catalyst Contributors, see Catalyst.pm
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147 This library is free software. You can redistribute it and/or modify it
148 under the same terms as Perl itself.
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