README - haproxy - Gitiles

                          ----------------------
                              HAProxy how-to
                          ----------------------
                               version 1.4
                              willy tarreau
                                2010/05/09


 1) How to build it
 ------------------

 To build haproxy, you will need :
   - GNU make. Neither Solaris nor OpenBSD's make work with the GNU Makefile.
     However, specific Makefiles for BSD and OSX are provided.
   - GCC between 2.91 and 4.5.0. Others may work, but not tested.
   - GNU ld

 Also, you might want to build with libpcre support, which will provide a very
 efficient regex implementation and will also fix some badness on Solaris' one.

 To build haproxy, you have to choose your target OS amongst the following ones
 and assign it to the TARGET variable :

   - linux22     for Linux 2.2
   - linux24     for Linux 2.4 and above (default)
   - linux24e    for Linux 2.4 with support for a working epoll (> 0.21)
   - linux26     for Linux 2.6 and above
   - solaris     for Solaris 8 or 10 (others untested)
   - freebsd     for FreeBSD 5 to 8.0 (others untested)
   - openbsd     for OpenBSD 3.1 to 4.6 (others untested)
   - cygwin      for Cygwin
   - generic     for any other OS.
   - custom      to manually adjust every setting

 You may also choose your CPU to benefit from some optimizations. This is
 particularly important on UltraSparc machines. For this, you can assign
 one of the following choices to the CPU variable :

   - i686 for intel PentiumPro, Pentium 2 and above, AMD Athlon
   - i586 for intel Pentium, AMD K6, VIA C3.
   - ultrasparc : Sun UltraSparc I/II/III/IV processor
   - generic : any other processor or no specific optimization. (default)

 Alternatively, you may just set the CPU_CFLAGS value to the optimal GCC options
 for your platform.

 You may want to build specific target binaries which do not match your native
 compiler's target. This is particularly true on 64-bit systems when you want
 to build a 32-bit binary. Use the ARCH variable for this purpose. Right now
 it only knows about a few x86 variants (i386,i486,i586,i686,x86_64) and sets
 -m32/-m64 as well as -march=<arch> accordingly.

 If your system supports PCRE (Perl Compatible Regular Expressions), then you
 really should build with libpcre which is between 2 and 10 times faster than
 other libc implementations. Regex are used for header processing (deletion,
 rewriting, allow, deny). The only inconvenient of libpcre is that it is not
 yet widely spread, so if you build for other systems, you might get into
 trouble if they don't have the dynamic library. In this situation, you should
 statically link libpcre into haproxy so that it will not be necessary to
 install it on target systems. Available build options for PCRE are :

   - USE_PCRE=1 to use libpcre, in whatever form is available on your system
     (shared or static)

   - USE_STATIC_PCRE=1 to use a static version of libpcre even if the dynamic
     one is available. This will enhance portability.

   - with no option, use your OS libc's standard regex implemntation (default).
     Warning! group references on Solaris seem broken. Use static-pcre whenever
     possible.

 By default, the DEBUG variable is set to '-g' to enable debug symbols. It is
 not wise to disable it on uncommon systems, because it's often the only way to
 get a complete core when you need one. Otherwise, you can set DEBUG to '-s' to
 strip the binary.

 For example, I use this to build for Solaris 8 :

     $ make TARGET=solaris CPU=ultrasparc USE_STATIC_PCRE=1

 And I build it this way on OpenBSD or FreeBSD :

     $ make -f Makefile.bsd REGEX=pcre DEBUG= COPTS.generic="-Os -fomit-frame-pointer -mgnu"

 In order to build a 32-bit binary on an x86_64 Linux system :

     $ make TARGET=linux26 ARCH=i386

 If you need to pass other defines, includes, libraries, etc... then please
 check the Makefile to see which ones will be available in your case, and
 use the USE_* variables in the GNU Makefile, or ADDINC, ADDLIB, and DEFINE
 variables in the BSD makefiles.

 AIX 5.3 is known to work with the generic target. However, for the binary to
 also run on 5.2 or earlier, you need to build with DEFINE="-D_MSGQSUPPORT",
 otherwise __fd_select() will be used while not being present in the libc.


 2) How to install it
 --------------------

 To install haproxy, you can either copy the single resulting binary to the
 place you want, or run :

     $ sudo make install

 If you're packaging it for another system, you can specify its root directory
 in the usual DESTDIR variable.


 3) How to set it up
 -------------------

 There is some documentation in the doc/ directory :

     - architecture.txt : this is the architecture manual. It is quite old and
       does not tell about the nice new features, but it's still a good starting
       point when you know what you want but don't know how to do it.

     - configuration.txt : this is the configuration manual. It recalls a few
       essential HTTP basic concepts, and details all the configuration file
       syntax (keywords, units). It also describes the log and stats format. It
       is normally always up to date. If you see that something is missing from
       it, please report it as this is a bug.

     - haproxy-en.txt / haproxy-fr.txt : these are the old outdated docs. You
       should never need them. If you do, then please report what you didn't
       find in the other ones.

     - gpl.txt / lgpl.txt : the copy of the licenses covering the software. See
       the 'LICENSE' file at the top for more information.

     - the rest is mainly for developers.

 There are also a number of nice configuration examples in the "examples"
 directory as well as on several sites and articles on the net which are linked
 to from the haproxy web site.


 4) How to report a bug
 ----------------------

 It is possible that from time to time you'll find a bug. A bug is a case where
 what you see is not what is documented. Otherwise it can be a misdesign. If you
 find that something is stupidly design, please discuss it on the list (see the
 "how to contribute" section below). If you feel like you're proceeding right
 and haproxy doesn't obey, then first ask yourself if it is possible that nobody
 before you has even encountered this issue. If it's unlikely, the you probably
 have an issue in your setup. Just in case of doubt, please consult the mailing
 list archives :

                         http://www.formilux.org/archives/haproxy/
                         http://marc.info/?l=haproxy

 Otherwise, please try to gather the maximum amount of information to help
 reproduce the issue and send that to the mailing list :

                         haproxy@formilux.org

 Please include your configuration and logs. You can mask your IP addresses and
 passwords, we don't need them. But it's essential that you post your config if
 you want people to guess what is happening.

 Also, keep in mind that haproxy is designed to NEVER CRASH. If you see it die
 without any reason, then it definitely is a critical bug that must be reported
 and urgently fixed. It has happened a couple of times in the past, essentially
 on development versions running on new architectures. If you think your setup
 is fairly common, then it is possible that the issue is totally unrelated.
 Anyway, if that happens, feel free to contact me directly, as I will give you
 instructions on how to collect a usable core file, and will probably ask for
 other captures that you'll not want to share with the list.


 5) How to contribute
 --------------------

 It is possible that you'll want to add a specific feature to satisfy your needs
 or one of your customers'. Contributions are welcome, however I'm often very
 picky about changes. I will generally reject patches that change massive parts
 of the code, or that touch the core parts without any good reason if those
 changes have not been discussed first.

 The proper place to discuss your changes is the HAProxy Mailing List. There are
 enough skilled readers to catch hazardous mistakes and to suggest improvements.
 You can subscribe to it by sending an empty e-mail at the following address :

                         haproxy+subscribe@formilux.org

 If your work is very confidential and you can't publicly discuss it, you can
 also mail me directly about it, but your mail may be waiting several days in
 the queue before you get a response.

 If you'd like a feature to be added but you think you don't have the skills to
 implement it yourself, you should follow these steps :

     1. discuss the feature on the mailing list. It is possible that someone
        else has already implemented it, or that someone will tell you how to
        proceed without it, or even why not to do it. It is also possible that
        in fact it's quite easy to implement and people will guide you through
        the process. That way you'll finally have YOUR patch merged, providing
        the feature YOU need.

     2. if you really can't code it yourself after discussing it, then you may
        consider contacting someone to do the job for you. Some people on the
        list might be OK with trying to do it. Otherwise, you can check the list
        of contributors at the URL below, some of the regular contributors may
        be able to do the work, probably not for free but their time is as much
        valuable as yours after all, you can't eat the cake and have it too.

 The list of past and regular contributors is available below. It lists not only
 significant code contributions (features, fixes), but also time or money
 donations :

                         http://haproxy.1wt.eu/contrib.html

 Note to contributors: it's very handy when patches comes with a properly
 formated subject. Try to put one of the following words between brackets
 to indicate the importance of the patch followed if possible by a single
 word indicating what subsystem is affected, then by a short description :

   [BUG]      fix for a minor or medium-level bug. When a few of these ones are
              available, a new maintenance release is emitted.

   [CRITICAL] medium-term reliability or security is at risk, an upgrade is
              absolutely required. A maintenance release may be emitted even if
              only one of these bugs are fixed.

   [CLEANUP]  code cleanup, silence of warnings, etc... theorically no impact.
              These patches will rarely be seen in stable branches, though they
              may appear when they remove some annoyance.

   [MINOR]    minor change, very low risk of impact. It is often the case for
              code additions that don't touch live code.

   [MEDIUM]   medium risk, may cause unexpected regressions of low importance or
              which may quickly be discovered.

   [MAJOR]    major risk of hidden regression. This happens when I rearrange
              large parts of code, when I play with timeouts, with variable
              initializations, etc... We should only exceptionally find such
              patches in stable branches.

   [OPTIM]    some code was optimised. Sometimes if the regression risk is very
              low and the gains significant, such patches may be merged in the
              stable branch.

   [DOC]      documentation updates or fixes only. No code is affected, no need
              to upgrade. These patches can also be sent right after a new
              feature, to document it.

   [TESTS]    added regression testing configuration files or scripts

   [BUILD]    fix build issues. If you could build, no upgrade required.

   [LICENSE]  licensing updates (may impact distro packagers)

   [RELEASE]  release a new version (development version or stable version)

   [PATCH]    any other patch which could not be qualified with the tags above.


 The tags are not rigid, and I reserve the right to change them when merging the
 patch. It may happen that a same patch has a different tag in two distinct
 branches. The reason is that a bug in one branch may just be a cleanup in the
 other one because the code cannot be triggered.

 Examples of messages :
        - [DOC] document options forwardfor to logasap
        - [BUG] stats: connection reset counters must be plain ascii, not HTML
        - [MEDIUM] checks: support multi-packet health check responses
        - [RELEASE] Released version 1.4.2

 For a more efficient interaction between the mainline code and your code, I can
 only strongly encourage you to try the Git version control system :

                         http://git-scm.com/

 It's very fast, lightweight and lets you undo/redo your work as often as you
 want, without making your mistakes visible to the rest of the world. It will
 definitely help you contribute quality code and take other people's feedback
 in consideration. In order to clone the HAProxy Git repository :

     $ git clone http://git.1wt.eu/git/haproxy-1.4.git    (stable 1.4)
     $ git clone http://git.1wt.eu/git/haproxy.git/       (development)

 If you decide to use Git for your developments, then your commit messages will
 have the subject line in the format described above, then the whole description
 of your work (mainly why you did it) will be in the body. You can directly send
 your commits to the mailing list, the format is convenient to read and process.

 -- end
	----------------------
	HAProxy how-to
	----------------------
	version 1.4
	willy tarreau
	2010/05/09


	1) How to build it
	------------------

	To build haproxy, you will need :
	- GNU make. Neither Solaris nor OpenBSD's make work with the GNU Makefile.
	However, specific Makefiles for BSD and OSX are provided.
	- GCC between 2.91 and 4.5.0. Others may work, but not tested.
	- GNU ld

	Also, you might want to build with libpcre support, which will provide a very
	efficient regex implementation and will also fix some badness on Solaris' one.

	To build haproxy, you have to choose your target OS amongst the following ones
	and assign it to the TARGET variable :

	- linux22 for Linux 2.2
	- linux24 for Linux 2.4 and above (default)
	- linux24e for Linux 2.4 with support for a working epoll (> 0.21)
	- linux26 for Linux 2.6 and above
	- solaris for Solaris 8 or 10 (others untested)
	- freebsd for FreeBSD 5 to 8.0 (others untested)
	- openbsd for OpenBSD 3.1 to 4.6 (others untested)
	- cygwin for Cygwin
	- generic for any other OS.
	- custom to manually adjust every setting

	You may also choose your CPU to benefit from some optimizations. This is
	particularly important on UltraSparc machines. For this, you can assign
	one of the following choices to the CPU variable :

	- i686 for intel PentiumPro, Pentium 2 and above, AMD Athlon
	- i586 for intel Pentium, AMD K6, VIA C3.
	- ultrasparc : Sun UltraSparc I/II/III/IV processor
	- generic : any other processor or no specific optimization. (default)

	Alternatively, you may just set the CPU_CFLAGS value to the optimal GCC options
	for your platform.

	You may want to build specific target binaries which do not match your native
	compiler's target. This is particularly true on 64-bit systems when you want
	to build a 32-bit binary. Use the ARCH variable for this purpose. Right now
	it only knows about a few x86 variants (i386,i486,i586,i686,x86_64) and sets
	-m32/-m64 as well as -march=<arch> accordingly.

	If your system supports PCRE (Perl Compatible Regular Expressions), then you
	really should build with libpcre which is between 2 and 10 times faster than
	other libc implementations. Regex are used for header processing (deletion,
	rewriting, allow, deny). The only inconvenient of libpcre is that it is not
	yet widely spread, so if you build for other systems, you might get into
	trouble if they don't have the dynamic library. In this situation, you should
	statically link libpcre into haproxy so that it will not be necessary to
	install it on target systems. Available build options for PCRE are :

	- USE_PCRE=1 to use libpcre, in whatever form is available on your system
	(shared or static)

	- USE_STATIC_PCRE=1 to use a static version of libpcre even if the dynamic
	one is available. This will enhance portability.

	- with no option, use your OS libc's standard regex implemntation (default).
	Warning! group references on Solaris seem broken. Use static-pcre whenever
	possible.

	By default, the DEBUG variable is set to '-g' to enable debug symbols. It is
	not wise to disable it on uncommon systems, because it's often the only way to
	get a complete core when you need one. Otherwise, you can set DEBUG to '-s' to
	strip the binary.

	For example, I use this to build for Solaris 8 :

	$ make TARGET=solaris CPU=ultrasparc USE_STATIC_PCRE=1

	And I build it this way on OpenBSD or FreeBSD :

	$ make -f Makefile.bsd REGEX=pcre DEBUG= COPTS.generic="-Os -fomit-frame-pointer -mgnu"

	In order to build a 32-bit binary on an x86_64 Linux system :

	$ make TARGET=linux26 ARCH=i386

	If you need to pass other defines, includes, libraries, etc... then please
	check the Makefile to see which ones will be available in your case, and
	use the USE_* variables in the GNU Makefile, or ADDINC, ADDLIB, and DEFINE
	variables in the BSD makefiles.

	AIX 5.3 is known to work with the generic target. However, for the binary to
	also run on 5.2 or earlier, you need to build with DEFINE="-D_MSGQSUPPORT",
	otherwise __fd_select() will be used while not being present in the libc.


	2) How to install it
	--------------------

	To install haproxy, you can either copy the single resulting binary to the
	place you want, or run :

	$ sudo make install

	If you're packaging it for another system, you can specify its root directory
	in the usual DESTDIR variable.


	3) How to set it up
	-------------------

	There is some documentation in the doc/ directory :

	- architecture.txt : this is the architecture manual. It is quite old and
	does not tell about the nice new features, but it's still a good starting
	point when you know what you want but don't know how to do it.

	- configuration.txt : this is the configuration manual. It recalls a few
	essential HTTP basic concepts, and details all the configuration file
	syntax (keywords, units). It also describes the log and stats format. It
	is normally always up to date. If you see that something is missing from
	it, please report it as this is a bug.

	- haproxy-en.txt / haproxy-fr.txt : these are the old outdated docs. You
	should never need them. If you do, then please report what you didn't
	find in the other ones.

	- gpl.txt / lgpl.txt : the copy of the licenses covering the software. See
	the 'LICENSE' file at the top for more information.

	- the rest is mainly for developers.

	There are also a number of nice configuration examples in the "examples"
	directory as well as on several sites and articles on the net which are linked
	to from the haproxy web site.


	4) How to report a bug
	----------------------

	It is possible that from time to time you'll find a bug. A bug is a case where
	what you see is not what is documented. Otherwise it can be a misdesign. If you
	find that something is stupidly design, please discuss it on the list (see the
	"how to contribute" section below). If you feel like you're proceeding right
	and haproxy doesn't obey, then first ask yourself if it is possible that nobody
	before you has even encountered this issue. If it's unlikely, the you probably
	have an issue in your setup. Just in case of doubt, please consult the mailing
	list archives :

	http://www.formilux.org/archives/haproxy/
	http://marc.info/?l=haproxy

	Otherwise, please try to gather the maximum amount of information to help
	reproduce the issue and send that to the mailing list :

	haproxy@formilux.org

	Please include your configuration and logs. You can mask your IP addresses and
	passwords, we don't need them. But it's essential that you post your config if
	you want people to guess what is happening.

	Also, keep in mind that haproxy is designed to NEVER CRASH. If you see it die
	without any reason, then it definitely is a critical bug that must be reported
	and urgently fixed. It has happened a couple of times in the past, essentially
	on development versions running on new architectures. If you think your setup
	is fairly common, then it is possible that the issue is totally unrelated.
	Anyway, if that happens, feel free to contact me directly, as I will give you
	instructions on how to collect a usable core file, and will probably ask for
	other captures that you'll not want to share with the list.


	5) How to contribute
	--------------------

	It is possible that you'll want to add a specific feature to satisfy your needs
	or one of your customers'. Contributions are welcome, however I'm often very
	picky about changes. I will generally reject patches that change massive parts
	of the code, or that touch the core parts without any good reason if those
	changes have not been discussed first.

	The proper place to discuss your changes is the HAProxy Mailing List. There are
	enough skilled readers to catch hazardous mistakes and to suggest improvements.
	You can subscribe to it by sending an empty e-mail at the following address :

	haproxy+subscribe@formilux.org

	If your work is very confidential and you can't publicly discuss it, you can
	also mail me directly about it, but your mail may be waiting several days in
	the queue before you get a response.

	If you'd like a feature to be added but you think you don't have the skills to
	implement it yourself, you should follow these steps :

	1. discuss the feature on the mailing list. It is possible that someone
	else has already implemented it, or that someone will tell you how to
	proceed without it, or even why not to do it. It is also possible that
	in fact it's quite easy to implement and people will guide you through
	the process. That way you'll finally have YOUR patch merged, providing
	the feature YOU need.

	2. if you really can't code it yourself after discussing it, then you may
	consider contacting someone to do the job for you. Some people on the
	list might be OK with trying to do it. Otherwise, you can check the list
	of contributors at the URL below, some of the regular contributors may
	be able to do the work, probably not for free but their time is as much
	valuable as yours after all, you can't eat the cake and have it too.

	The list of past and regular contributors is available below. It lists not only
	significant code contributions (features, fixes), but also time or money
	donations :

	http://haproxy.1wt.eu/contrib.html

	Note to contributors: it's very handy when patches comes with a properly
	formated subject. Try to put one of the following words between brackets
	to indicate the importance of the patch followed if possible by a single
	word indicating what subsystem is affected, then by a short description :

	[BUG] fix for a minor or medium-level bug. When a few of these ones are
	available, a new maintenance release is emitted.

	[CRITICAL] medium-term reliability or security is at risk, an upgrade is
	absolutely required. A maintenance release may be emitted even if
	only one of these bugs are fixed.

	[CLEANUP] code cleanup, silence of warnings, etc... theorically no impact.
	These patches will rarely be seen in stable branches, though they
	may appear when they remove some annoyance.

	[MINOR] minor change, very low risk of impact. It is often the case for
	code additions that don't touch live code.

	[MEDIUM] medium risk, may cause unexpected regressions of low importance or
	which may quickly be discovered.

	[MAJOR] major risk of hidden regression. This happens when I rearrange
	large parts of code, when I play with timeouts, with variable
	initializations, etc... We should only exceptionally find such
	patches in stable branches.

	[OPTIM] some code was optimised. Sometimes if the regression risk is very
	low and the gains significant, such patches may be merged in the
	stable branch.

	[DOC] documentation updates or fixes only. No code is affected, no need
	to upgrade. These patches can also be sent right after a new
	feature, to document it.

	[TESTS] added regression testing configuration files or scripts

	[BUILD] fix build issues. If you could build, no upgrade required.

	[LICENSE] licensing updates (may impact distro packagers)

	[RELEASE] release a new version (development version or stable version)

	[PATCH] any other patch which could not be qualified with the tags above.


	The tags are not rigid, and I reserve the right to change them when merging the
	patch. It may happen that a same patch has a different tag in two distinct
	branches. The reason is that a bug in one branch may just be a cleanup in the
	other one because the code cannot be triggered.

	Examples of messages :
	- [DOC] document options forwardfor to logasap
	- [BUG] stats: connection reset counters must be plain ascii, not HTML
	- [MEDIUM] checks: support multi-packet health check responses
	- [RELEASE] Released version 1.4.2

	For a more efficient interaction between the mainline code and your code, I can
	only strongly encourage you to try the Git version control system :

	http://git-scm.com/

	It's very fast, lightweight and lets you undo/redo your work as often as you
	want, without making your mistakes visible to the rest of the world. It will
	definitely help you contribute quality code and take other people's feedback
	in consideration. In order to clone the HAProxy Git repository :

	$ git clone http://git.1wt.eu/git/haproxy-1.4.git (stable 1.4)
	$ git clone http://git.1wt.eu/git/haproxy.git/ (development)

	If you decide to use Git for your developments, then your commit messages will
	have the subject line in the format described above, then the whole description
	of your work (mainly why you did it) will be in the body. You can directly send
	your commits to the mailing list, the format is convenient to read and process.

	-- end