> LWN uses mod_python, AFAIK.

Yes, we use mod_python.  Yesterday the site took a full-on slashdotting,
along with a "cnetting" and various other traffic sources, along with the
usual Thursday rush, along with a whole lot of people simply
bulk-downloading the whole thing.  Ran fine.  I have, of course, done a
fair amount of performance optimizing work, but it's worth stating that the
basic framework is pretty fast.

This is on a 1GHz Athlon system, BTW.

The big problem we have is getting things started; it takes a few seconds
for an apache process to load up all the site code and answer the first
request.  The first time I tried running the new code in a production mode,
the load average went over 200 within a minute - and everything came to a
complete stop.  We've worked around that problem in various ways, but it
*would* be nice to find a way to make startup faster.

jon

Jonathan Corbet
Executive editor, LWN.net
corbet@lwn.net