Red Hat Knowledgebase

In Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 and 5 there is an alternative to the Apache HTTP Server (httpd) known as TUX. TUX is a kernel-based, threaded and high-performance HTTP server: it incorporates an HTTP protocol stack into the kernel and can serve static data very efficiently. To service dynamic requests TUX needs to co-ordinate with a user space HTTP daemon (such as httpd).

To use TUX, first install the package "tux" - either by manually downloading it from the Red Hat Network (RHN), or through up2date or yum if the machine is registered to RHN. This package includes a Sys-V init script so that TUX can be controlled using the standard service andchkconfig commands.

Note that by default TUX binds to and runs on port 80, so it will fail to start correctly if any other services (for example, httpd) are running on this port.

The TUX server's configuration is handled through the configuration file /etc/sysconfig/tux and the procfs interface: specifically, the entries in the directory /proc/sys/net/tux/. For comprehensive information on the different configuration parameters available for TUX please see the TUX 2.0 Reference Manual.