What Is Tux Web Server and How do I Use it?

Q. Can you explain the tux web server and its usage against regular apache httpd web server?

A. The TUX web server is kernel web server for Linux system. It is currently limited to serving static web pages and coordinating with kernel-space modules, user-space modules, and regular user-space web server daemons to provide dynamic content. Regular user-space web servers do not need to be altered in any way for TUX to coordinate with them. TUX also has the ability to cache dynamic content. TUX modules (which can be build in kernel space or in user space; user space is recommended) can create “objects” which are stored using the page cache. To respond to a request for dynamic data, a TUX module can send a mix of dynamically-generated data and cached pre-generated objects, taking maximal advantage of TUX’s zero-copy architecture.

Tux is configured via procfs entries located at /proc/sys/net/tux/. Under CentOS / RHEL / Suse / Fedora Linux Tux can be configured via /etc/sysconfig/tux file.

Warning Tux may open your computer to attacker

WARNING! Having an HTTP daemon within the kernel is dangerous, if possible avoid Tux.

See Tux manual for configuration options.

However, I don’t recommend using Tux. It can be big security problem – a common bug such as a buffer overflow within TUX could give an attacker superuser control over the machine. I recommend lighttpd for static and dynamic configuration.

Posted by: Vivek Gite

The author is the creator of nixCraft and a seasoned sysadmin, DevOps engineer, and a trainer for the Linux operating system/Unix shell scripting. Get the latest tutorials on SysAdmin, Linux/Unix and open source topics via RSS/XML feed or weekly email newsletter.

Your support makes a big difference:

I have a small favor to ask. More people are reading the nixCraft. Many of you block advertising which is your right, and advertising revenues are not sufficient to cover my operating costs. So you can see why I need to ask for your help. The nixCraft takes a lot of my time and hard work to produce. If everyone who reads nixCraft, who likes it, helps fund it, my future would be more secure. You can donate as little as $1 to support nixCraft: