You should implement some caching mechanisms when dealing with high-traffic websites and blogs. The best way to handle caching website content is via proxy servers. There are two good open-source caching proxy servers: Varnish and Pound.
This post describes how to use Apache2 with Pound as a proxy server. The steps below are a good starting point to install and configure Pound to be a proxy server for Apache2.
Pound is an open-source HTTP accelerator. It is usually configured to sit in front of web servers to serve HTTP/HTTPS requests quickly. Pound can also be used as a load balancer to distribute loads across multiple web servers.
Configuring Pound to be the font end to Apache2 or other web servers can significantly enhance the server’s performance.
This is because Pound stores web caches in the system’s memory, ensuring faster retrieval in subsequent requests for the same resource.
To get this working, follow the steps below:
Install Apache2 HTTP Server
First, run the commands below to install the Apache2 webserver.
sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install apache2
After installing Apache2, the commands below can stop, start and enable Apache2 to always startup every time the server boots up.
sudo systemctl stop apache2.service sudo systemctl start apache2.service sudo systemctl enable apache2.service
The apache2 HTTP service is default automatically bound to ports 80 and 443 for HTTPS. This
Install Pound Proxy Server
Now that Apache2 is installed run the commands below to install Pound
sudo apt-get install pound
After installing Pound, the commands below can be used to start, stop and enable Varnish always to start up when the server boots
sudo systemctl stop pound.service sudo systemctl start pound.service sudo systemctl enable pound.service
Switch the Apache2 default post to 8080
Since we want Pound to listen for all traffic coming to port 80, which is Apache2’s default port, let’s configure Apache2 to use another port number. You can open the Apache2 default port configuration file at /etc/apache2/ports.conf and change the Listen value to 8080.
To quickly change the port, run the commands below to open the Apache2 default port configuration file.
sudo nano /etc/apache2/ports.conf
Then make sure the file has these lines. Save when done.
# If you just change the port or add more ports here, you will likely also # have to change the VirtualHost statement in # /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/000-default.conf NameVirtualHost 127.0.0.1:8080 Listen 127.0.0.1:8080
Next, open the Apache2 default virtual host config file.
sudo nano /etc/apache2/sites-available/000-default.conf
Then make the highlighted change below.
<VirtualHost 127.0.0.1:8080>
Save the file and exit.
Then restart Apache2
sudo systemctl restart apache2.service
To access Apache2, you’ll have to enter the server IP or hostname followed by port # 8080.
ex. http://localhost:8080
Configure Pound to use Port 80
Now that port 80 is free let’s configure Pound to use that post instead. To assign port 80 to Varnish, run the commands below.
Pound default configure file is located at /etc/pound/pound.cfg
Open it by running the commands below:
sudo nano /etc/pound/pound.cfg
Then look for the config block under listen, redirect, and .. and make the highlighted changes as shown below. Use the server IP address and not the loopback (127.0.0.1)
User "www-data"
Group "www-data"
#RootJail "/chroot/pound"
LogLevel 1
## check backend every X secs:
Alive 30
# poundctl control socket
Control "/var/run/pound/poundctl.socket"
######################################################################
## listen, redirect and . to:
## redirect all requests on port 8080 ("ListenHTTP") to the local webserver (see "Service" below):
ListenHTTP
Address 192.168.43.133
Port 80
## allow PUT and DELETE also (by default only GET, POST and HEAD)?:
xHTTP 0
Service
BackEnd
Address 192.168.43.133
Port 8080
End
End
End
Save the file and close.
Next, run the commands to open the Pound default startup script config.
sudo nano /etc/default/pound
Then change the value to 1
# prevent startup with default configuration
# set the below varible to 1 in order to allow pound to start
startup=1
Save the file.
After that, restart both Apache2 and Varnish.
sudo systemctl restart apache2.service sudo systemctl restart pound.service
If everything is set up correctly, Pound should be the default listener of port 80.
Congratulations! You’ve just installed Apache2 with Pound support.
If you followed the steps above and can’t still get Pound to listen on port 80, run the commands below to create the Pound socket control directory if it’s not already there.
sudo mkdir /var/run/pound
During my test, the folder above was missing.
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