Potential book outline....

What is Perlbal?

  -- reverse proxy / load balancer

  -- web server

  -- pluggable

  -- event based
     * connection cheap
     * scalable w/ epoll, kqueue

  -- introspective

Perlbal tricks  (teaser overviews to get excited, forward refs to more details in later sections)

  -- internal (client-transparent) redirects, to pass req between backend HTTP servers,
     or pass to static webserver mode in perlbal itself.

  -- smart load balancing

  -- runtime config changes

  -- buffered uploads

  -- verified backends (why it helps so much with loaded apaches)


Configuring

  * About config

    -- config file format.
    -- config file is just a bunch of line-based commands,
       also work in mgmt port.
       * explain implicit command context
    -- change all config at runtime

  * global commands (max fds, etc)

  * Services, service roles

    -- general service options
    -- service role types

  * Configuring a static webserver service

    -- example configs and drawings/explanations

    -- service options

  * Configuring reverse proxy service

    -- example configs and drawings/explanations

    -- service options

  * Selector services

    -- example configs and drawings/explanations

    -- map onto other services based on criteria.

    -- vhosts.

  * Hybrid modes:

    -- selectors & x-reproxy-url & x-reproxy-file & x-reproxy-service

    -- crazy examples:

        * typepad/mogilefs crazy setup/selector


Monitoring Perlbal

  * all the introspection admin commands

Hacking on Perlbal

  * class hierarchy.  roles of each object.

  * explain hook system, document all hooks

  * walk through minimal vhost plugin code, as example of how
    to write a service selector.

  * tips for debugging memory leaks:

     -- easy to introduce circular loops w/ safaris 
     -- $^P = 0x200;
     -- Devel::Gladiator,
     -- Devel::Cycle