i have just built a box running ubuntu desktop and vmware server to
consolidate the machines running out of my house.  i have one dynamically
assigned IP and i use a dynamic update client to register ip changes and
stuff, and i have a few virtual hosts running off a windows server.  they
are pretty low traffic and not overly complex.

so what i have is a collection of name based virtual hosts, running on
virtual machines, all hosted off the same box.  each server has it's own
inernal static IP (192.168.x.y) and is accessible to the internal network
just like a real computer.

i want to add to the mix a LAMP vmware machine with name based hosts of its
own, and i need a reverse proxy to bounce between the virtual hosts since i
only get 1 IP and only 1 port 80.

the sites are very low traffic, all personal sites, i don't have a need
presently for ssl, but it would be nice to have the option.

my questions are:

1. is pound overkill for this purpose?  if so what is a more appropriate
tool?

2. i was planning on running pound on the host os (ubuntu) instead of one of
the virtual machines, and it has only one processor.  should i worry about
hoard and the PCRE libraries?  even with a couple of dozen virtual hosts (i
can't imagine needing that many) will there be much of an impact on
performance?

3. i tried compiling pound and it says that the compiler can't create
executables, so i must be missing a library or something.  i have GCC
installed, what else would i need?

On Sun, Jul 30, 2006 at 09:48:33PM -0400, Chris Anderson wrote:[...]

Hell, "pound" as overkill?  The very reason for its existence is
having a _lightweight_ proxy.  It is not squid, it doesn't have tens
of potentially insecure inter-cache protocols, doesn't claim all the
host's memory for itself and won't cause data loss just because it
feels like massaging its cache during an emergency shutdown or
because it wants to rebuild the cache on startup (not serving
requests is data loss, throwing away the cache and serving them a bit
slower is not).
Unless aggressive caching is what you want, pound is the most
appropiate tool for the needs you stated that I know about.
 [...]

You need to run pound on only one machine, the one that gets the
requests on port 80 on your external IP.  The cost per virtual host
is in the range of hundreds of bytes.

About hoard or pcre:
Depends: libc6 (>= 2.4-1), libssl0.9.8 (>= 0.9.8a-1)[...]

thanks for the info adam!

it never occurred to me to look for a pound package on the ubuntu site.
that was a rookie mistake on my part.  i'll admit that i am not that
familiar with ubuntu or debian, being mostly a BSD/slackware guy on those
rare occasions that i dabble with unix.   packaging systems that aren't
glorified tarballs look pretty much like witchcraft to me :-)

i went with ubuntu cuz it was the only "supported" os that wasn't redhat.
truth be told, it's pretty elegant and not completely wizard driven, which
for a desktop oriented linux distro is a real accomplishment.