Apache Week issue 292

Apache Week <[email protected]> Fri, 19 Apr 2002 17:01:24 +0100
Newsgroups gmane.comp.apache.apacheweek
Message-ID <[email protected]>
                                APACHE WEEK
                                      
The essential weekly guide for users of the world's most popular Web server.
                         Issue 292: 19th April 2002
                                      
                                 In this issue
                                       
     * Under development
     * In the news
     * Featured articles
     * Apache Week giveaway
       
                               Under development
                                       
     There was further discussion of the MPMs in 2.0 this week, as the
     perchild MPM was moved into the "experimental" directory to reflect
     the expected stability from the module. A second new experimental
     thread-based MPM, threadpool was added by Brian Pane, with a design
     similar to the leader/follower MPM which was committed last week.
     Brian also benchmarked four of the MPMs available for Unix systems:
     finding that leader/follower gave the best performance for a server
     listening on a single port, and worker the best performance for a
     server listening on two ports.
     
Recent changes since 2.0.35

     The following changes have been committed to the Apache 2.0 CVS
     tree since the 2.0.35 release:
     * hooks added to mod_dav allowing a repository provider module to
       implement the DASL (WebDAV search) specification
     * fix to allow using mod_proxy and mod_ssl as a reverse SSL to HTTP
       proxy ([1]BZ#8174)
     * fix for an infinite loop in mod_ssl which could be triggered by
       using Netscape Navigator
     * fix a performance problem under high load in the Windows NT MPM
     * fix a possible deadlock in the Netware MPM
     * addition of new experimental "leader/follower" and "threadpool"
       MPMs due to performance problems in the worker MPM under high load
       (see [2]last week's issue)
     * performance and reliability fixes in the worker MPM
     * added new MIME types image/vnd.djvu and application/xhtml+xml
       ([3]BZ#7795, [4]BZ#7969)
     * fix for segfaults seen when generating "invalid byterange"
       responses (code 416)
     * HTTP compliance fixes: read trailing headers of chunked input
       bodies, and allow an empty Host: header ([5]BZ#7441)
     * documentation updates ([6]BZ#8037, [7]BZ#7832)
     * many small build and configure fixes ([8]BZ#7840, [9]BZ#7818,
       [10]BZ#7802, [11]BZ#7841)
     * fixes to mod_proxy ([12]PR#10010)
     * portability fixes for AIX ([13]BZ#7957), Solaris ([14]BZ#7876),
       Mac OS X ([15]BZ#7970), and Windows ([16]BZ#7910)
       
                                  In the news
                                       
Apache 2.0 beats IIS

     eWeek benchmark Apache 2.0 in their article [17]Apache 2.0 Beats
     IIS at Its Own Game. Although they find little performance
     difference on Unix between Apache 2.0 and Apache 1.3, the results
     on Windows against IIS 5.0 are more significant.
     
     Apache kept pace with IIS during the entire test, which means that
     sites that move from IIS to Apache 2.0 on Windows won't have to
     worry about taking a performance hit.
     
Commercial Apache offerings

     Two commercial packages based on Apache made the news this week.
     Firstly, New Architect magazine [18]review Covalent Enterprise
     Ready Server and find it to be a complete management system for
     handling configuration, monitoring, and log file management of a
     distributed network of servers. Meanwhile, Red Hat launched their
     [19]Stronghold Enterprise web server for Linux and Unix platforms
     based on open source technologies including Apache, AxKit, Tomcat,
     and OpenSSL.
     
                               Featured articles
                                       
     In this section we highlight some of the articles on the web that
     are of interest to Apache users.
     
     After many close encounters with spambots, Neil Gunton decides to
     share with us his secrets of having successfully eliminated
     spambots from trawling his web site in [20]"Stopping Spambots: A
     Spambot Trap". In a friendly conversational style, he provides us
     with the full scripts and step-by-step instructions on how to set a
     trap for spambots, and then block the IP address of the bot that
     falls into the trap by using Apache, mod_perl, Perl, MySQL and
     ipchains rules. He also discusses the pros and cons of his Spambot
     Trap system.
     
     Here's an article that is almost too good to be true - [21]"Writing
     Self-Documenting PHP Code". It shows you how PHPDoc can be used to
     automatically generate API documentation for your PHP classes from
     the comments within your code. Of couse your comments need to
     conform to a specific format, but it'll save you the tedious task
     of writing the API manual yourself later on.
     
     The [22]second installment of the AxKit series examines the
     pipeline processing model further. It then implements a simple XSP
     taglib in a pipeline with XSLT to create dynamic pages. As in the
     first installment, the article uses a nice diagram to illustrate
     the concept of a pipeline.
     
     [23]"Apache and SSL" by Paul Weinstein first gives a brief
     introduction about the SSL (Secure Sockets Layer), and TLS
     (Transport Layer Security) protocols. Then it explores how the SSL
     handshake is performed to establised an SSL session, and ends by
     looking at how Apache implements SSL.
     
                             Apache Week giveaway
                                       
     We received just under 500 entries to our recent competition,
     although 4 of those were spam which goes to show how quickly email
     address harvesting robots get to work on a site. Congratulations to
     the three lucky winners chosen at random; Robin Berjon (France),
     Nigel Boor (UK), and Ralf Hildebrandt (Germany).
     
     Thanks also for the many comments that were sent in, mostly
     revolving around the most likely ingredients that would be in the
     chef making the chili. Read the [24]Apache Week review of the
     mod_perl Cookbook.
       ______________________________________________________________
     
     This issue brought to you by: Mark J Cox, Joe Orton, Min Min Tsan
     Comments or criticisms? Please email us at
     [25][email protected].
     
     [26]Apache Week is copyright 1996-2002 by [27]Red Hat, Inc.

References

   1. http://nagoya.apache.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=8174
   2. http://www.apacheweek.com/issues/02-04-12#dev
   3. http://nagoya.apache.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=7795
   4. http://nagoya.apache.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=7969
   5. http://nagoya.apache.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=7441
   6. http://nagoya.apache.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=8037
   7. http://nagoya.apache.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=7832
   8. http://nagoya.apache.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=7840
   9. http://nagoya.apache.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=7818
  10. http://nagoya.apache.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=7802
  11. http://nagoya.apache.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=7841
  12. http://bugs.apache.org/index/full/10010
  13. http://nagoya.apache.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=7957
  14. http://nagoya.apache.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=7876
  15. http://nagoya.apache.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=7970
  16. http://nagoya.apache.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=7910
  17. http://www.eweek.com/article/0,3658,s=702&a=25458,00.asp
  18. http://www.newarchitectmag.com/documents/s=2457/new1017960455815/index.html
  19. http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/24907.html
  20. http://www.neilgunton.com/spambot_trap/
  21. http://www.devshed.com/Server_Side/PHP/SelfDoc/page1.html
  22. http://www.perl.com/pub/a/2002/04/16/axkit.html
  23. http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/onlamp/2002/04/18/ssl.html
  24. http://www.apacheweek.com/features/book-mod_perlcookbook
  25. mailto:[email protected]
  26. http://www.apacheweek.com/
  27. http://www.redhat.com/

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