Apache Prefork vs Worker MPM

Question

Looking at the Apache config file, I see Prefork and Worker MPM defined. What is the difference and which one is Apache using?

Answer 1

For CentOS 6.x and 7.x (including Amazon Linux) use:

sudo httpd -V

This will show you which of the MPMs are configured. Either prefork, worker, or event. Prefork is the earlier, threadsafe model. Worker is multi-threaded, and event supports php-mpm which is supposed to be a better system for handling threads and requests.

However, your results may vary, based on configuration. I've seen a lot of instability in php-mpm and not any speed improvements. An aggressive spider can exhaust the maximum child processes in php-mpm quite easily.

The setting for prefork, worker, or event is set in sudo nano /etc/httpd/conf.modules.d/00-mpm.conf (for CentOS 6.x/7.x/Apache 2.4).

# Select the MPM module which should be used by uncommenting exactly
# one of the following LoadModule lines:

# prefork MPM: Implements a non-threaded, pre-forking web server
# See: http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.4/mod/prefork.html
#LoadModule mpm_prefork_module modules/mod_mpm_prefork.so

# worker MPM: Multi-Processing Module implementing a hybrid
# multi-threaded multi-process web server
# See: http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.4/mod/worker.html
#LoadModule mpm_worker_module modules/mod_mpm_worker.so

# event MPM: A variant of the worker MPM with the goal of consuming
# threads only for connections with active processing
# See: http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.4/mod/event.html
#LoadModule mpm_event_module modules/mod_mpm_event.so