Installing Mod_Throttle on cPanel Published: Aug 17, 2004

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Do you need more granular control over some of your clients? Instead of limiting them to a certian amount of bandwidth per month, how about per week, day or even hour? Apache module mod_throttle is the answer.

This Apache module is intended to reduce the load on your server & bandwidth generated by popular virtual hosts, directories, locations, or users according to supported polices (see below) that decide when to delay or refuse requests. Also mod_throttle can track and throttle incoming connections by IP address or by authenticated remote user.

Every request now passes through four levels of throttling, which are: by client's IP address (ThrottleClientIP), by authenticated remote user name (ThrottleRemoteUser), by local user ID (ThrottleUser), and by directory, location, virtual host, or server (ThrottlePolicy).

To install with cPanel, SSH into your server as root and perform the following:

cd /usr/src

wget http://www.snert.com/Software/mod_throttle/mod_throttle312.tgz

tar zxvf mod_throttle312.tgz

cd mod_throttle-3.1.2

pico Makefile

Then edit the line that reads:

APXS=apxs

And change it to read:

APXS=/usr/local/apache/bin/apxs

Save the file and then:

make

make install

service httpd restart

Usage

Best bet is to go to http://www.snert.com/Software/mod_throttle/ and read up on all the options, but I will give you an example of limiting a site, and how to monitor all your throttled sites status.

Edit your /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf and locate the virtualhost entry for the site you wish to throttle. Just BEFORE the </VirtualHost> entry, insert:

<IfModule mod_throttle.c>
ThrottlePolicy Volume 10G 30d
</IfModule>
<Location /throttle-me>
SetHandler throttle-me
</Location>

The ThrottlePolicy line is the key. The first number is the amount of data and acceptable letters are G, M and K. The second number is the period and acceptable letters are m, w, d, h, and s.

Then restart Apache (service httpd restart).

If you want to be able to see the status of all throttled sites on the server at once, go to the first virtualhost entry in your httpd.conf file (this should be the entry for your server's hostname) and add the following:

<Location /throttle-status>
SetHandler throttle-status
</Location>

Then restart Apache again, and you can go to http://host.name.com/throttle-status and see the status of all throttled sites.

Enjoy!