[ALUG] Some python behind my apache server is *incredibly* slow

[Chris G]

On Wed, Dec 10, 2008 at 11:37:37AM +0000, Richard Lewis wrote:
> On Wednesday 10 December 2008 11:15:20 Chris G wrote:
> > I have some python scripts which convert reStructuredText to HTML 'on
> > the fly' when xxxx.rst files are browsed.
> >
> > When I look at the pages locally performance is acceptable but I have
> > just tried remotely (from work) and it takes several minutes to
> > display a new xxxx.rst page.  Normal HTML and other stuff are shown at
> > normal speed, I have some quite complex PHP (which I didn't write)
> > being served by the same apache server and it's fine.
> >
> When you say "locally", do you meaning executing the Python in its own 
> process? Or making an HTTP GET request from localhost to Apache running on 
> localhost? i.e., is it the fact that the Python is running within Apache 
> that's making it slow? Or is it the fact that you are making the request from 
> elsewhere?

Sorry, wasn't clear.  When I look at the xxxx.rst pages using Firefox
on the same computer where the apache server is running then
performance is OK (in fact, more than 'OK', it runs as fast as
everything else).

> >
> > Can anyone suggest any reason for remote access to this being so
> > incredibly slow?  It's probably some dire misconfiguration somewhere
> > but I don't know where to start looking really.
> 
> If the script runs slowly *because* it's being run within Apache, the next 
> question to ask is how are you running it in Apache? CGI? FastCGI? mod_python?
> 
It's using:-

    ExtFilterDefine rst-to-html mode=output \
        intype=text/rst outtype=text/html \
        cmd="/home/chris/bin/info2html.py"

with some other additions (of course) to feed .rst files into the filter.

I know it's not going to handle heavy loads but as I'm the only user
that doesn't matter.  As I said it works fine via firefox on the
computer where the apache server is.

It's not that the above is generating masses of network traffic is it?
That would give the symptoms I'm seeing.  It's odd, I have just tried
from another remote site using lynx and, while hardly instant, the
response times are acceptable.  Even odder, using lynx from here
(work) response is OK but using firefox it's still truly awful.

One thing I've noticed, the URLs as they appear while being loaded in
lynx are of the form xxxxx.html.gz.  I'm not explicitly compressing
them so some cleverness somewhere appears to be doing so.

-- 
Chris Green