Re: OSX Server 4.10: hidden HUGE Log file

At 09:44 -0700 2007-08-29, Pedro Alvarez Jr wrote:
>Thanks to all for the help in finding this file which was located in:
>/var/log/webperfcahe/webperfcache_log.0 and was over 25gb in size!
>Anyone have an idea of how this file gets so big and how to avoid
>it? Should I be periodically deleting this file?

   Via a quick Google search, it appears this log file *may* be
associated with a performance cache for the Apache web server in Mac
OS X Server. *If* so ...

   This cache is said in one posting (untried by me) to be
configurable in the "Server Admin" app, via
"Site->Web->Settings->{sitename}->Options->Performance Cache.

   Info about this cache:
   http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=107898

   And, per our campus Safari license, more detailed information from
the O'Reilly book, Essential Mac OS X Server Administration, is
excerpted below.

At 09:25 -0700 2007-08-29, Dana E Keil wrote:
>I would probably use Terminal and the "find" utility. Logged in as
>root or using sudo, issue the command "find / -size +1000000000c
>-ls" -- that will locate everything on the disk over a gigabyte or
>so.

   Thanks, Dana!

   Another useful tool for finding large files, which uses some
innovative visualization techniques:

   GrandPerspective
   http://grandperspectiv.sourceforge.net/

>GrandPerspective is a small utility application for Mac OS X that
>graphically shows the disk usage within a file system. It can help
>you to manage your disk, as you can easily spot which files and
>folders take up the most space. It uses a so called tree map for
>visualisation. Each file is shown as a rectangle with an area
>proportional to the file's size. Files in the same folder appear
>together, but their placement is otherwise arbitrary.

Aron Roberts
Information Services and Technology

--
 From Michael Bartosh and Ryan Faas,
Essential Mac OS X Server Administration, O'Reilly, 2005
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/macxserver/
23.3.1. The Performance Cache
To most administrators comfortable with Apache, the strangest thing 
about Apple's implementation is the performance cache. The 
performance cache is a front-end proxy that's designed to speed 
access to static HTML files. It does this by caching static content 
from the web server into RAM, thus making it easier for the server to 
dish out that content as needed instead of having to call it up from 
disk.
When activated in a site's Option pane in Server Admin, the 
performance cache server (located in /usr/sbin/webperfcache) runs on 
port 80 (or the other configured ports for a web server's sites) and 
is the first responder to requests from clients. If the request can 
be satisfied from the cache, it returns the content for that 
request-usually faster than Apache can do so by itself. However, if 
the content doesn't exist in the cache, the request is sent along to 
Apache, which is running on a private port (10680 in a default 
installation).
Lower traffic sites or sites that serve quite a bit of dynamic (and 
therefore uncachable) content won't benefit much from the performance 
cache. In addition, since using the performance cache moves Apache to 
a different port than the public HTTP port 80, it can interfere with 
scripts that expect to use the server port to rewrite URLs.
If the performance cache were implemented as an Apache module instead 
of as a separate process, the configuration problems around ports 
wouldn't rear their ugly head.
For most sites, Apache's performance is more than adequate. Even 
though the performance cache is enabled by default, you should follow 
the lead of many experienced Apache administrators and disable it. If 
you do use the performance cache, you can modify its configuration by 
editing the /etc/webperfcache/webperfcache.conf file.
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