== link:index.html[Index] -> link:other.html[Other information]

Other: Frequently Asked Questions
---------------------------------

Here is a list of the most frequently asked questions. Please refer to
the appropriate section of the documentation for more details.

[[faq01]]
=== How to compile it

----
./configure --prefix=/usr --sysconfdir=/etc --localstatedir=/var
make
----

[[faq02]]
=== How to create dynamic modules

It's the default way.

[[faq03]]
=== How to configure the module xyz to be linked statically

----
./configure --prefix=/usr --sysconfdir=/etc \
  --localstatedir=/var                      \
  --enable-static-module=xyz
----

[[faq04]]
=== How to build everything statically

----
./configure --prefix=/usr --sysconfdir=/etc \
  --localstatedir=/var                      \
  --enable-static-module=all
----

[[faq05]]
=== How to create a self signed certificate for TLS

----
openssl req -days 1000 -new -x509 -nodes    \
  -out /etc/cherokee/ssl/cherokee.pem       \
  -keyout /etc/cherokee/ssl/cherokee.pem
----

[[faq06]]
=== How to access cherokee-admin from a remote machine

cherokee-admin binds only to local loopback by default. There are some
workarounds:

* Create an SSH tunnel. This is the recommended way. In order to do so
  you must issue the following command:
+
----
ssh -L 9090:localhost:9090 remote_IP
----
+
After that you can access the remote interface through
  http://localhost:9090 and every request will be forwarded to the
  remote IP running cherokee-admin.


* Launch cherokee-admin with the -b parameter in order to force it to
  listen to all the network interfaces.

* Finally you could always install cherokee on your local host,
  configure it there and then copy the generated cherokee.conf file to
  the device running the cherokee instance you wanted to set up.

[[faq07]]
=== How to manually write configuration files without cherokee-admin

The configuration file is a plain text file and its syntax is well
documented. Check the link:dev_cherokee.conf.html[cherokee.conf]
internal format information. Notice that manually editing the
configuration is not the recommended method, but the format will
always be kept updated to facilitate scripting tasks, working with
embedded devices and other similar situations.

[[faq08]]
=== Does Cherokee speak WSGI natively like `mod_wsgi` does?

In short: not like `mod_wsgi` at all. There is native support for the
link:http://projects.unbit.it/uwsgi/[uWSGI server], which is a fast
(pure C), self-healing, developer-friendly WSGI server aimed for
professional python webapps deployment and development. Cherokee also
provides a wizard to adjust its settings to those defined in the uWSGI
configuration file of your project.

/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
We believe that we should not implement anything like `mod_wsgi` for a
number of reasons.

* First, and purely from an architectural point, embedding an
interpreter into the web server doesn't feel quite right. Be it a huge
interpreter linked against dozens of libraries or be it something
using Python's shared libraries, it doesn't fit with the design
principles applied throughout Cherokee's code base.

* Second, it sounds hard to believe that `mod_wsgi` is faster than a
plain and simple SCGI application writing to a Unix socket: WSGI
applications can also use link:modules_handlers_fcgi.html[FastCGI] and
link:modules_handlers_scgi.html[SCGI] backends, which are fully
supported by Cherokee.

We believe Cherokee should be as fast, light, clean and secure as
possible, and to this end we tend to disregard bulky and monolithic
solutions. At least until we are given very, VERY, good reasons to
give it further consideration.

Give Cherokee (SCGI|FastCGI) a try with your WSGI application.  We
believe that besides fixing both the architectural and security flaws
you will improve performance.
/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

[[faq09]]
=== I need to make an administration script: What signals are supported by Cherokee?

The list is documented in the link:other_signals.html[Signals] entry.

[[faq10]]
=== Is there a clean way of switching Cherokee to Maintenance mode?

Check the link:cookbook.html[Cookbook], there is a
link:cookbook_maintenance.html[recipe on the subject].

[[faq11]]
=== What licensing is used by the Cherokee web server?

Cherokee is licensed under the GNU General Public License, version 2,
which can be found in the file *COPYING* distributed with the source
code. For more details, read the
link:http://svn.cherokee-project.com/browser/cherokee/trunk/COPYING[full
license] in the project's SVN repository.

If for whatever reason this license does not suit your needs, other
licensing schemes can be negotiated on a particular basis. Contact
link:http://www.octality.com/[Octality] if this is your case.

[[faq12]]
=== And what about the documentation?

The documentation is distributed under a
link:http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/[Creative Commons
Attribution (by)] license, which is the most accommodating in terms of
what others can do with it. It lets others distribute, remix, tweak,
and build upon the work, even commercially.

[[faq13]]
=== How can I contribute contents to the documentation?

The documentation is written and maintained using
link:http://www.methods.co.nz/asciidoc/[AsciiDoc], a text document
format for writing short documents, articles, books and UNIX man pages
that can be easily translated to HTML and DocBook markups. It is
really easy to get the hang of it, so if you want to contribute,
please take a look at the
link:http://powerman.name/doc/asciidoc[AsciiDoc Cheatsheet] and start
editing the documentation sources right ahead. They are distributed
with the source code and are located under `./doc` of the source tree.
If you don't have SVN access, simply mail your contributions to
link:mailto:feedback@cherokee-project.com[feedback@cherokee-project.com].

[[faq14]]
=== Can encoders be set for specific file types?

Yes. Since content encoding is set on a per-rule basis, simply add a
rule at the beginning of the virtual server that matches the specific
file extensions and has the encoding enabled. Set the rule to be
non-final. That should do the trick.

[[faq15]]
=== I can't set TLS/SSL in Cherokee-Admin. There's no TLS/SSL (and nothing in the pulldown) for me.

First, make sure openssl in installed. If you are not installing from
source, most likely you've missed installing libcherokee-mod-libssl

[[faq16]]
=== Can I use an old configuration file with a new Cherokee release?

The answer is yes. Please refer to the
link:basics_upgrade.html[Upgrading Cherokee] section of the
documentation.

[[faq17]]
=== I'm using *BSD and can't compile Cherokee. What's wrong?

Make sure you are building it with `gmake`.

[[faq18]]
=== Why do I keep getting HTTP Error 400 while uploading files to a PHP back-end?

PHP is configured by default to limit the size of uploaded
files. Check the link:cookbook_php.html#upload_limits[PHP upload
limits] note to tweak the appropriate settings.

[[faq19]]
=== Why are my nicknames not matched, while *.example.com does work?

The Cherokee Virtual Server nickname is not the first thing that is
evaluated. In fact all the Host Matches are first evaluated from top
to bottom, then the nicknames from top to bottom, and on last resort:
Default.

For example: a virtual server (`A`) with the nickname test.example.com, and
a second virtual server (`B`) with a hostmatch .*\.example.com. In this
example, the virtual server `B` will be matched first.

If you are specifically looking for the virtual server `A` to be
matched first, you will have rely on it being matched by `Host Match`
instead of by nickname.

.Solution
* Virtual Server A RegEx: ^test.example.com$
* Virtual Server B RegEx: .*\.example.com$

Carefully read the way in which
link:config_virtual_servers.html#domain_names[host matches] are
performed if you still need further clarification.

[[faq20]]
=== SSLv2 is ancient, OpenSSL 1.0.0+ doesn't like it, how can I disable it?

Within cherokee-admin, in the Advanced Menu, you can find the option
to enable/disable SSLv2 all together. It is disabled by default. No
need to resort to special ciphers such
(`ALL:!ADH:-LOW:-SSLv2:-EXP:-eNULL:@STRENGTH`), or anythingh else for
that matter. If you need it, simply enable the check-box to allow
SSLv2.

[[faq21]]
=== I'm used to Apache's .htaccess. Will Cherokee ever support it?

Short answer: No. Cherokee is designed to be efficient. Using
.htaccess is not: it's not a scalable architecture at all, it's
horrible for performance, you can't use it with Cherokee, and even if
you could, you shouldn't. If you need .htaccess, you're probably doing
it wrong. For .htaccess to work, Apache has to check *every* directory
in the requested path for the existence of a .htaccess file, and if
present, read and parse *every* one of them. This happens for *every*
request. Sure, changes in .htaccess are effective instantly, but
that's because Apache has to read and process the files every time. As
the requests dig deeper into the directory tree, the associated
overhead of stats an reads grows. And it is not negligible at all: an
increase in anything from 5 to 50 is usual for very typical
configurations.

Yes, the use of .htaccess is very extended. Yes, it has been around
for a while. No, that doesn't mean it is a good architecture. There
are better ways of doing things. Converting the behavior of a
.htaccess file to an efficient set of rules for Cherokee is not
complicated.
