Re: [Gimp-developer] Invoking custom Gimp module from Web (Apache)
Hi, I run gimp and mod_perl on a production server and trigger longer jobs using the 'at' command so as not to keep users hanging around for a result. Some of the runs can generate upwards of 1,000 or so images, so the connections were timing out long before the job ever ended. For shorter jobs, gimp start-up time can be significantly reduced - by upwards of 8 seconds on my laptop - by giving the apache process it's own gimp configuration directory in it's home directory. On my debian systems the apache process runs as user 'www-data' and it's home directory is /var/www. I copy a '.gimp-2.2' directory and then set the permissions up: cp ~/.gimp-2.2 /var/www chown -R www-data.www-data /var/www/.gimp-2.2 I have a tarball of a simple conf directory which I use to do the same thing on production servers, but the above is simple and effective and I was very chuffed when I figured it out! It's not as good as a keeping persistent connections going, but gives instant results for little work :) Iain P.S. I'll upgrade to gimp-2.2 soon, honest! Tom Rathborne wrote: > On Sun, Oct 04, 2009 at 04:33:28PM -0400, Vio wrote: >> You're right. Keeping a running Gimp daemon in memory would most >> certainly speed things up (for subsequent calls) > > This worked very well with gimp-perl and mod_perl 10 years ago. > It was relatively easy to establish a persistent connection from > mod_perl to the gimp-perl server. Just as in database connections, > each Apache child maintained a socket connection to gimp-perl. > > It's just a matter of sorting out the socket permissions, as you have > learned. For security purposes, I ran gimp as a different user, but > granted permissions on the socket to www-data, and allowed gimp to > write to a specific directory in the document root to enable caching > of output images. > > The performance was amazing, even 10 years ago. > > I'm not sure if gimp-python has a similar server mode, but if it does, > I'm sure that mod_python could cache the connections for similar > performance levels. > > Cheers, > > Tom > ___ Gimp-developer mailing list Gimp-developer@lists.XCF.Berkeley.EDU https://lists.XCF.Berkeley.EDU/mailman/listinfo/gimp-developer
Re: [Gimp-developer] Invoking custom Gimp module from Web (Apache)
On Sun, Oct 04, 2009 at 04:33:28PM -0400, Vio wrote: > You're right. Keeping a running Gimp daemon in memory would most > certainly speed things up (for subsequent calls) This worked very well with gimp-perl and mod_perl 10 years ago. It was relatively easy to establish a persistent connection from mod_perl to the gimp-perl server. Just as in database connections, each Apache child maintained a socket connection to gimp-perl. It's just a matter of sorting out the socket permissions, as you have learned. For security purposes, I ran gimp as a different user, but granted permissions on the socket to www-data, and allowed gimp to write to a specific directory in the document root to enable caching of output images. The performance was amazing, even 10 years ago. I'm not sure if gimp-python has a similar server mode, but if it does, I'm sure that mod_python could cache the connections for similar performance levels. Cheers, Tom -- -- Tom Rathborne -- The most perfidious way of harming a cause consists of defending it deliberately with faulty arguments. -- Friedrich Nietzsche ___ Gimp-developer mailing list Gimp-developer@lists.XCF.Berkeley.EDU https://lists.XCF.Berkeley.EDU/mailman/listinfo/gimp-developer
Re: [Gimp-developer] Invoking custom Gimp module from Web (Apache)
You're right. Keeping a running Gimp daemon in memory would most certainly speed things up (for subsequent calls) I recall the python tutorial has some sample code on writing simple servers in python (so, the python code is already available, therefore I'd guess it's probably just a matter of importing it into the Gimp-python plugin - hence no need to do much/any low-level socket programming. I'm running my devel code (apache+mod_py+Gimp) on a tiny web-book (acer's aspire one) so I'd guess better performance would be achieved de-facto by simply using better hardware (I mean, in a production environment). (and re-writing all this in C would obviously win the 100m hurdles, but that's overkill for me, for now, I'll be happy with working python code) vio PS. Hey, nice last name :) Sounds like You must get a lot of action at Halloween... On Sun, Oct 4, 2009 at 12:02 PM, Alexia Death wrote: > On Sun, Oct 4, 2009 at 4:19 PM, Vio wrote: >> Invoking GIMP from mod_python works Ok, but it is quite slow. >> 1 round-trip request - from the client page requesting the Gimp stuff >> until the server gets back to the client with the response page >> is quite long - about 10-15 sec - and most (ALL?) of the time is spent >> on the Gimp side, NOT the apache/mod_py side. >> So obviously this is not a speed demon, as Gimp was not >> designed to serve web requests. But speed problem aside, >> it does work. ... it just needs 'veeery' patient users :) > > I suspect part of the speed problem is that gimp is started and loaded > at each call. a running gimp process is capable of taking over without > a new process at least for opening images, but I don't know if you can > do this for scripts. You might get better times if you write a plug-in > that listens on a socket and executes received pdb calls. ___ Gimp-developer mailing list Gimp-developer@lists.XCF.Berkeley.EDU https://lists.XCF.Berkeley.EDU/mailman/listinfo/gimp-developer
Re: [Gimp-developer] Invoking custom Gimp module from Web (Apache)
I haven't tried mod_wsgi yet, so I'm doing it using mod_python. (I don't see a compelling reason to dump mod_python yet, not to mention the learning curve and potential time-cost to convert my scripts from mod_py to mod_wsgi - I don't really know if there are any, just guessing here...) Invoking GIMP from mod_python works Ok, but it is quite slow. 1 round-trip request - from the client page requesting the Gimp stuff until the server gets back to the client with the response page is quite long - about 10-15 sec - and most (ALL?) of the time is spent on the Gimp side, NOT the apache/mod_py side. So obviously this is not a speed demon, as Gimp was not designed to serve web requests. But speed problem aside, it does work. ... it just needs 'veeery' patient users :) Anyway, good luck on your side, I think you'll have no big problem making this work, vio On Sat, Oct 3, 2009 at 11:26 PM, Brochester L. wrote: > i consider myself pretty well versed with efficiency based upon server > performance and apache conforms for me pretty well in plugging in modules to > suite my needs and users demands. But I just don't see how you can use Common > Gateway Interfacing for this task. I found your thread through a search engine > looking for this exact same type of discussion but theres no way I'm gonna > pipe gimp to apache in this manner. But Hey Man if you fetch yourself a > release of mod_wsgi or mod_python this cgi method might just be doable, but > with a lot of users running this, it could be hazardous. > With My method I am developing I am going to use (hypothetically, I have not > done this) a seperate module for gimp which will thread request's to and fro > mod_wsgi(which I have just config'd and am working on the kinks). > I would be more than happy to share my progress. Check out my website in a > couple of days (http://site.google.com/site/abstractind) > > -- Subscidiary Faction of AbstractIndustrys > ___ > Gimp-developer mailing list > Gimp-developer@lists.XCF.Berkeley.EDU > https://lists.XCF.Berkeley.EDU/mailman/listinfo/gimp-developer > ___ Gimp-developer mailing list Gimp-developer@lists.XCF.Berkeley.EDU https://lists.XCF.Berkeley.EDU/mailman/listinfo/gimp-developer
Re: [Gimp-developer] Invoking custom Gimp module from Web (Apache)
Thanks for the hints ... Some interesting developments while running under sudo. The first run: - sudo -u www-data gimp --no-interface --batch='(python-fu-pdf2jpg RUN-NONINTERACTIVE "/dd/d/app/front/PAK_live/srvr/xformx.com/run/pdf_forms/le-50.0.11.01(2008-10)d8.pdf" )' --batch='(gimp-quit 1)' - gives error: error: Cannot create folder '/var/www/.gimp-2.6': Permission denied So I temporarily opened up /var/www with permission 777 and tried previous command again - to see that gimp is going to write in the /var/www directory: -- sudo -u www-data gimp --no-interface --batch='(python-fu-pdf2jpg RUN-NONINTERACTIVE "/dd/d/app/front/PAK_live/srvr/xformx.com/run/pdf_forms/le-50.0.11.01(2008-10)d8.pdf" )' --batch='(gimp-quit 1)' No protocol specified /var/lib/python-support/python2.6/gtk-2.0/gtk/__init__.py:72: GtkWarning: could not open display warnings.warn(str(e), _gtk.Warning) No protocol specified (file-uri:5738): Gtk-WARNING **: cannot open display: :0.0 (gimp:5568): LibGimpBase-WARNING **: gimp: gimp_wire_read(): error No protocol specified /var/lib/python-support/python2.6/gtk-2.0/gtk/__init__.py:72: GtkWarning: could not open display warnings.warn(str(e), _gtk.Warning) batch command executed successfully -- This 2nd run interesting things (FINALLY) happened :) The most important is the last line: it says that gimp executed my plugin, and indeed, it did (wrote some debug file to the filesystem, as expected). Also, after examining '/var/www', I see that gimp created 2 new directories: drwx-- 4 www-data www-data 4096 2009-10-02 15:38 .gegl-0.0 drwxr-xr-x 21 www-data www-data 4096 2009-10-02 15:38 .gimp-2.6 I don't know how safe it is to keep these Gimp directories inside my main apache directory - it probably opens up some hole of some kind - but anyway, priority now is to make Gimp happy. I'll deal with holes inside my web server later ... Conclusion: it seems Gimp needed these 2 dirs in that place, as now it seems to work with my preliminary (i.e. debugging) code. The key was to run that gimp command as "sudo -u www-data gimp ..." to get that error message. Before that, I had no idea what Gimp was complaining about, or if it was even invoked at all ... Thanks for your help, suggestions, and happy Gimping all ! (I'll be 'web-gimping' in my case :) vio ___ Gimp-developer mailing list Gimp-developer@lists.XCF.Berkeley.EDU https://lists.XCF.Berkeley.EDU/mailman/listinfo/gimp-developer
Re: [Gimp-developer] Invoking custom Gimp module from Web (Apache)
On 10/02/2009 05:47 PM, Vio wrote: > gimp --no-interface --batch='(python-fu-pdf2jpg RUN-NONINTERACTIVE > "/path/to/image/to/proces.pdf" )' --batch='(gimp-quit 1)' > > doesn't get executed. Or it does but fails silently - which is not > very helpful here !! Does it help if you set the GIMP2_DIRECTORY environment variable to "/tmp/gimpdir"? / Martin -- My GIMP Blog: http://www.chromecode.com/ ___ Gimp-developer mailing list Gimp-developer@lists.XCF.Berkeley.EDU https://lists.XCF.Berkeley.EDU/mailman/listinfo/gimp-developer
Re: [Gimp-developer] Invoking custom Gimp module from Web (Apache)
On Friday 02 October 2009 18:47:46 Vio wrote: > This would suggest a permissions problem, but I'm not sure. > I wonder: does Gimp need to write to the user home directory by any chance? > In that case, 'www-data' (the apache user) doesn't have a home > directory per se. Gimp needs a place IIRC designated by the $HOME env variable to have its user settings. Ive never tried what happens if is not there even to read, but Im not surprised it does not work. You cant try this out by running the command you have in the rights of www-data using sudo. you should have a clear picture what happens. --Alexia ___ Gimp-developer mailing list Gimp-developer@lists.XCF.Berkeley.EDU https://lists.XCF.Berkeley.EDU/mailman/listinfo/gimp-developer
