Apache Week issue 328

                                APACHE WEEK

The essential weekly guide for users of the world's most popular Web server.
                          Issue 328: 23rd May 2003

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                                 In this issue

     * Under development
     * In the news
     * Featured articles

                               Under development

     A  proposal to add two new modules to the Apache httpd distribution
     (mod_macro  and  mod_define) reopened two age-old debates; what set
     of modules should be included in httpd, and whether or not a richer
     macro language should be allowed in configuration files. The latter
     question  gained the usual consensus that external tools such as m4
     should  be  used  to preprocess the configuration file, rather than
     supporting  a new programming language inside Apache. On the former
     question,  there  appears  to  be growing support for the idea of a
     CPAN-like distribution of extension modules, a system also recently
     adopted by PHP with the [1]PEAR project.

     [2]Rich  Bowen  identified  a  case  where  a directory permissions
     problem could cause Apache 1.3 to return a 403 error code for a GET
     request, but not log an error message - a situation which can cause
     significant  confusion  for  many  server  administrators. The bug,
     which  turned  out  to  have  been  introduced  as a workaround for
     another problem, has been fixed in the 1.3 tree.

     Preparations  for  a  2.0.46  release are well underway; the stable
     tree  has  been tagged twice for testing and is running on the live
     apache.org  server. The new release includes mostly bug fixes for a
     variety  of minor problems. There is a suspicion that a performance
     hit  of  a few percent has been introduced since 2.0.45, though the
     problem  remains  to  be  identified. A new 1.3 release, 1.3.28 may
     also be forthcoming in the next few weeks.

                                  In the news

     Inspired  by our feature, [3]"Vendor patches to Apache", NewsFactor
     Network  talks  to  Apache  Week  editor [4]Mark Cox in their story
     [5]"Patching Apache".

     There  are  hundreds  of  distributors of the software, and most of
     them make tiny changes to the code to suit their own needs. Keeping
     a  tight  rein on modifications seems like a difficult proposition,
     but  the  politics  of  the  open-source community have kept Apache
     largely  intact.  Still,  some vendors are going their own way with
     the software and finding that certain improvements do make sense.

                               Featured articles

     In  this  section we highlight some of the articles on the web that
     are of interest to Apache users.

     [6]"Integrating Tomcat with Apache" shows you how to install Tomcat
     4.1.18  and  mod_jk  from  a binary distribution, build mod_jk from
     source, and configure the Apache's httpd.conf and the Workers files
     to  make them work together. The steps provided can also be applied
     to  the  latest  release of Tomcat 4, version 4.1.24. It also gives
     you  a few pointers on what to look out for if you encounter errors
     while testing your installation.

     SecurityFocus  presents a short step-by-step tutorial on [7]setting
     up  a  secure  Apache  1.3.27  web server on FreeBSD 4.7. First, it
     specifies  the functionality required and security assumptions made
     for  the web server, then it installs, builds and configures Apache
     to use only the minimum required modules in a chrooted environment,
     and  ends  by  writing  a  start-up  script.  Some of the items not
     covered  by this set up are SSL web servers, dynamic web pages, and
     CGI scripts.

     In  [8]"Deploying Apache Tomcat on FreeBSD", Tony Arcieri walks you
     through  the  steps  of  building  a  native  JDK  1.3 for FreeBSD,
     installing  Apache 2 and Tomcat 4.1.12, and configuring Apache 2 to
     use  mod_webapp  as  the  connector module. He succeeded in proving
     that it is not difficult to set up a FreeBSD-based Java Application
     Server.

     [9]"Open  Source  Web Development with LAMP" by James Lee and Brent
     Ware  scores  full  marks  in [10]Alan Eibner's review at Slashdot.
     [11]Chapter  5  -  MySQL of the book is now available online in PDF
     format.
       ______________________________________________________________

     This issue brought to you by: Mark J Cox, Joe Orton, Min Min Tsan
     Comments or criticisms? Please email us at
     [12][email protected].

     [13]Apache Week is Copyright 2003 [14]Red Hat, Inc.

References

   1. http://pear.php.net/
   2. http://httpd.apache.org/contributors/#rbowen
   3. http://www.apacheweek.com/features/vendorversions
   4. http://httpd.apache.org/contributors/#cox
   5. http://www.NewsFactor.com/perl/story/21560.html
   6. http://www.serverwatch.com/tutorials/article.php/10825_2203891_1
   7. http://securityfocus.com/infocus/1694
   8. http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=3558
   9. http://www.opensourcewebbook.com/
  10. http://books.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/04/11/1434259
  11. http://www.opensourcewebbook.com/about/ch05.pdf
  12. mailto:[email protected]
  13. http://www.apacheweek.com/
  14. http://www.redhat.com/

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