How about getting rid of Apache cgi-bin overhead?

I just noticed something in the log file...

https://login.agni.lindenlab.com/cgi-bin/login.cgi

No wonder logging in takes so long. CGI-BIN has a pretty hefty overhead. That extra layer of fork()/exec() could surely be avoided.

In 2009 that's considered hefty? Isn't that kinda like emptying your pockets of lint to lighten the load?

When I clicked that link I got a message about LL using an invalid security certificate.

Is there any significance to that?

It's a self-signed certificate. I'm guessing that it's the way the SL viewer logs into SL, and isn't intended to be used from regular web browsers. If that's the case, then as long as the viewer has the signature authority in its list, and you trust the viewer, there's no problem.

I wouldn't assume that cgi-bin is necessarily configured to run the login.cgi script in a separate process. This could just be a historical artifact. The URL is just an identifier of some resource. At one point it may have been implemented via Apache and the cgi-bin convention, but it doesn't have to be.

Conversely, just because the forum url is http://forums.secondlife.com/index.php?, that doesn't mean it's implemented as a linked library. It's perfectly possible to configure Apache to run that script as a separate CGI process.

In any event, we've all seen the login progress bar. Firing up the login script is a tiny fraction of where the time is going.

Um, yes, if you're trying to do it thousands of times a second. That's why things like PHP and JSP and Neoscript and other server plugins were invented, because fork()ing an Apache process and exec()ing a separate program can take as much time as servicing a thousand requests that are handled in the server process itself.
No, it's like talking off the 10 kilo arm and leg weights and 40 kilo pack and putting down the wheelbarrow with two drunks and a bag of manure in it.

Well, if you find a trout in your bottle of milk it *could* have just come from an exceptionally riparian cow, it could also mean someone's watering the milk.

This could be a trout. This isn't proof, it's evidence, that maybe there's a key part of the login process that might benefit from a little optimization.

For bouts of yesterday, there could have been about 30,000+ accounts trying to log in simultaneously and repeatedly.

But in logging in you're about to do a lot more than handle that one process. Does it matter that the doorway will only accommodate two if beyond there's a single-file, twelve storey climb up slippery stairs, with a fat guy trying to go the wrong way?



Of couse the purpose of this post is only to solicit another colorful analogy

Most of which is not going to happen on login.agni.lindenlab.com. It's going to happen on at least 16 database server banks (at last count) and, increasingly, the 15,000 sims of Second Life.

So, yes, it does matter that you're wearing a 40 kilogram pack while wheeling two drunk guys and a load of manure into the lobby... when you've got 16 teams of paramedics and a ballroom full of volunteer nurses inside to take care of them.

As already noted, we don't actually know that there's a bag of manure in the wheelbarrow. It just smells like it.