Download Pound: A Guide to the Reverse Load Balancer, HTTP Proxy, and SSL Wrapper
If you are looking for a simple and efficient way to balance the load of your web servers, proxy your HTTP requests, and wrap your SSL connections, you might want to download Pound. Pound is a lightweight and open-source software that can perform all these functions with minimal configuration and overhead. In this article, we will explain what Pound is, why you should use it, how to download and install it on Linux, and how to use it.
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What is Pound and what does it do?
Pound is a program that acts as a reverse load balancer, an HTTP proxy, and an SSL wrapper. It can distribute the requests from web clients among several web servers, forward the requests to the appropriate server based on the URL or the header, and encrypt and decrypt the SSL connections between the clients and the servers. Here are some of the features of Pound:
Pound as a reverse load balancer
Pound can balance the load among several web servers based on different criteria, such as availability, response time, number of sessions, or weighted round-robin.
Pound can handle sticky sessions, meaning that it can keep the same client connected to the same server for a certain period of time or until the session expires.
Pound can detect when a web server is down or overloaded and redirect the requests to another server.
Pound can handle HTTPS requests as well as HTTP requests.
Pound as an HTTP proxy
Pound can act as a reverse proxy, meaning that it can forward the requests from web clients to the web servers behind it, hiding their identity and location.
Pound can rewrite the URLs or the headers of the requests or the responses according to certain rules.
Pound can compress or decompress the data transferred between the clients and the servers.
Pound can filter out unwanted requests based on their IP address, host name, or content.
Pound as an SSL wrapper
Pound can encrypt and decrypt the SSL connections between the web clients and the web servers, using OpenSSL libraries.
Pound can support different SSL protocols and ciphers.
Pound can verify the certificates of the clients or the servers.
Pound can handle client-side or server-side SSL renegotiation.
Why use Pound?
Pound is a versatile and powerful tool that can improve the performance, security, and reliability of your web applications. Here are some of the reasons why you might want to use Pound:
Benefits of Pound
Pound is easy to install and configure. It has a simple configuration file that allows you to define your web servers, your load balancing criteria, your proxy rules, and your SSL settings.
Pound is lightweight and efficient. It has a low memory footprint and CPU usage. It can handle thousands of concurrent connections without slowing down.
Pound is compatible with most web servers and web applications. It supports HTTP/1.0, HTTP/1.1, HTTPS, WebSockets, CGI scripts, PHP scripts, etc.
Pound is open-source and free. You can download it from SourceForge or from its official website. You can also modify it or contribute to its development if you want to. You can also find documentation and support on its website or on its mailing list.
Drawbacks of Pound
Pound is not a full-featured web server. It does not support features such as caching, logging, authentication, or scripting. You will need to use another web server behind Pound to handle these functions.
Pound is not a firewall. It does not protect your web servers from attacks such as denial-of-service, brute-force, or SQL injection. You will need to use another security tool to prevent these threats.
Pound is not a web accelerator. It does not optimize the delivery of your web content, such as images, videos, or static files. You will need to use another web performance tool to speed up your web applications.
How to download and install Pound on Linux
If you want to download and install Pound on Linux, you will need to have some prerequisites, such as a C compiler, the OpenSSL libraries, and the PCRE libraries. You will also need to download the Pound source code from SourceForge, compile it, and install it on your system. Here are the steps to follow:
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Prerequisites
Before you download and install Pound, you will need to make sure that you have the following packages installed on your Linux system:
A C compiler, such as gcc or clang.
The OpenSSL development libraries, such as libssl-dev or openssl-devel.
The PCRE development libraries, such as libpcre3-dev or pcre-devel.
You can install these packages using your package manager, such as apt, yum, or pacman. For example, on Debian or Ubuntu, you can run the following command:
sudo apt install gcc libssl-dev libpcre3-dev
Downloading Pound from SourceForge
Once you have the prerequisites installed, you can download the Pound source code from SourceForge. You can either download it using your web browser or using the wget command. For example, to download the latest version (2.8c) of Pound, you can run the following command:
wget -O pound-2.8c.tgz
This will download the compressed file pound-2.8c.tgz in your current directory. You can then extract it using the tar command:
tar xzf pound-2.8c.tgz
This will create a directory called pound-2.8c with the source code files inside.
Compiling and installing Pound from source
To compile and install Pound from source, you will need to enter the pound-2.8c directory and run the configure script with some options. For example, you can run the following command:
cd pound-2.8c ./configure --prefix=/usr/local --with-ssl=/usr --with-owner=nobody --with-group=nogroup
This will configure Pound with the following options:
--prefix=/usr/local: This will install Pound in the /usr/local directory.
--with-ssl=/usr: This will use the OpenSSL libraries from the /usr directory.
--with-owner=nobody: This will run Pound as the user nobody.
--with-group=nogroup: This will run Pound as the group nogroup.
You can change these options according to your preferences. You can also run ./configure --help to see all the available options.
After running the configure script, you can compile Pound by running the make command:
make
This will create the executable file pound in the src directory.
To install Pound on your system, you can run the make install command with sudo privileges:
sudo make install
This will copy the pound executable file to /usr/local/sbin and the pound configuration file to /usr/local/etc.
Configuring Pound
To configure Pound, you will need to edit the pound configuration file located at /usr/local/etc/pound.cfg. This file contains several sections that define how Pound should behave as a load balancer, a proxy, and an SSL wrapper. You can use a text editor of your choice to edit this file.
The pound configuration file has a general structure like this:
# Global options User "nobody" Group "nogroup" LogLevel 1 Alive 30 # Listeners ListenHTTPS Address 0.0.0.0 Port 443 Cert "/usr/local/etc/cert.pem" # Service Service # Back-end servers BackEnd Address 192.168.0.1 Port 80 Priority 1 End BackEnd Address 192.168.0.2 Port 80 Priority 2 End # Load balancing criteria Session Type IP TTL 300 End End End ListenHTTP Address 0.0.0.0 Port 80 # Service Service # URL rewriting rules RewriteLocation 2 # Proxy rules HeadRequire "Host: example.com" # Back-end server BackEnd Address 192.168.0.3 Port 8080 End End End
In this example, Pound is configured to listen on port 443 for HTTPS requests and on port 80 for HTTP requests. It uses the certificate file /usr/local/etc/cert.pem for SSL encryption and decryption. It balances the load among two back-end servers (192.168.0.1 and 192.168.0.2) based on their priority and the IP address of the client. It also proxies the requests to another back-end server (192.168.0.3) on port 8080 if the host name is example.com.
You can customize this configuration file according to your needs and preferences. You can find more details and examples on the Pound website or in the pound man page.
How to use Pound
After you have downloaded, installed, and configured Pound, you can start using it as a reverse load balancer, an HTTP proxy, and an SSL wrapper for your web applications. Here are some of the basic commands and tips to use Pound:
Starting and stopping Pound
To start Pound, you can run the pound command with sudo privileges:
sudo pound
This will launch Pound in the background and read the configuration file from /usr/local/etc/pound.cfg.
To stop Pound, you can run the killall command with sudo privileges:
sudo killall pound
This will terminate all the Pound processes running on your system.
Testing Pound
To test if Pound is working properly, you can use a web browser or a curl command to send requests to your web servers through Pound. For example, if you have configured Pound to listen on port 443 for HTTPS requests, you can run the following command:
curl -k
This will send an HTTPS request to your localhost through Pound and display the response from one of your back-end servers.
You can also use a web browser to access your web applications through Pound and check if they are working as expected.
Troubleshooting Pound
If you encounter any problems or errors while using Pound, you can check the following sources for help:
The Pound log file: You can find the log file at /var/log/messages or /var/log/syslog, depending on your system configuration. You can also change the log level in the pound configuration file to get more or less information.
The Pound website: You can find documentation, FAQs, mailing lists, and bug reports on the official website of Pound. You can also contact the developers or other users for support or feedback.
The Pound man page: You can read the man page of Pound by running the man pound command. You can find useful information about the syntax, options, and examples of Pound.
Conclusion
Pound is a simple and efficient software that can act as a reverse load balancer, an HTTP proxy, and an SSL wrapper for your web applications. It can improve the performance, security, and reliability of your web servers with minimal configuration and overhead. You can download and install Pound on Linux from SourceForge or from its official website. You can also configure and use Pound according to your needs and preferences.
We hope that this article has helped you understand what Pound is, why you should use it, how to download and install it on Linux, and how to use it. If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to leave them below.
FAQs
Q: What is the difference between a reverse load balancer and a normal load balancer?
A: A normal load balancer distributes the requests from one client to several servers, while a reverse load balancer distributes the requests from several clients to one or more servers.
Q: How can I change the port that Pound listens on?
A: You can change the port that Pound listens on by editing the pound configuration file and changing the Port option in the ListenHTTPS or ListenHTTP section.
Q: How can I update Pound to the latest version?
A: You can update Pound to the latest version by downloading the source code from SourceForge or from its official website, compiling it, and installing it over the existing version.
Q: How can I monitor the status of Pound and the back-end servers?
A: You can monitor the status of Pound and the back-end servers by using the PoundCtl command, which is a separate program that communicates with Pound and displays information about its configuration and operation.
Q: How can I secure Pound and prevent unauthorized access?
A: You can secure Pound and prevent unauthorized access by using SSL certificates, firewall rules, IP address filtering, or authentication methods.
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