Apache Week
   
   Issue 335, 26th September 2003:  

Copyright ©2020 Red Hat, Inc

In this issue


Under development

The subject of using the colon character in a URL arose after Jeff Trawick discovered that such URLs elicit a 403 error on Windows but a 404 error on Unix platforms. On Windows the colon is forbidden as it is used as the drive letter separator; there was some discussion about how the colon could be allowed when passed as PATH_INFO to a PHP script, for instance.

The APR project, which develops the portability library used in 2.0, produced a new release this week, version 0.9.4, along with a redesigned web site by Justin Erenkrantz. The APR CVS tree was recently split into two branches; the HEAD of the tree is working towards a 1.0 release, whereas the 0.9 maintenance branch is kept for backwards-compatible changes only. The httpd 2.1 (unstable) tree hence uses the HEAD of APR; the stable 2.0 branch uses the APR 0.9 branch.

Test tarballs have been made available from the 2.0 tree for those wishing to test the forthcoming 2.0.48 release. The developers are hoping to get a few more fixes from the 2.1 tree tested and back-ported before the official release.


In the news

Apache Everywhere I

The Register report from the Intel Developer Forum with their article "Goodbye, PC; hello, PS (Personal Server)". Intel have a vision that in the future we will all need to carry around a personal server comprising of storage, processing, and communications. Their prototype runs an embedded Linux OS and exports a filesystem via WebDAV using Apache inside. At Apache Week we think having a few million people running Apache on a personal server is a good thing; it will certainly create some great market share stats for Netcraft.

Apache Everywhere II

Each month we relay the latest Apache market share statistics from Netcraft, but we don't need to bother again. Apache now officially serves 100% of all web sites on the Internet (with a little help from Verisign). Whilst the controversy over the decision by Verisign to point all unassigned domain names at its Web site continues, we like the fact that just about any domain name you can think of now runs Apache on Linux. However, when asked by Apache Week, Netcraft founder Mike Prettejohn told us his survey results now ignore these wildcard top-level domains. Spoilsport!

mod_elvis

Yes, it's time again for that part of the newsletter where we tell you all about the upcoming ApacheCon conference in Las Vegas and how you'll really kick yourself if you miss it. Apache Week will be there, at the Alexis Park Hotel in November, but unlike previous years we won't be writing much of it up for the newsletter; we'd prefer to get you to go and register for the conference and turn up in person. It also means we can spend our spare evenings in the bar instead of working on Apache Week. The schedule is now online and includes talks on how the BBC integrated IP geography systems into Apache 2, how to secure the web server, everything you want to know about XML parsing, and much more.


Featured articles

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

Bradley J. Bartram has advice on "Stress Testing an Apache Application Server in a Real World Environment". He covers the tools you need to do the testing, how to set up a test environment, and how to interpret the results as well as giving a number of tips for designing dynamic applications.

In the article "Single Sign-on for Your Web Applications with Apache and Kerberos", Jason Garman looks at the complicated task of integrating a web server with Kerberos. He discusses a module that enables Apache to interoperate with Internet Explorer clients in a Windows domain, transparently passing their domain credentials through the use of Kerberos, with no separate username or password prompts.

Finally this week, Jack Wallen shows us how to "Use Apache's mod_rewrite to make URLs more user friendly", by creating rules that can hide long path names and scripts.


This issue brought to you by: Mark J Cox, Joe Orton