In this issue

Release: 1.1.3 (Released 14th January 1997)
Beta: 1.2b7 (Released 22nd February 1997)

• If the file system used to store the cache files for the proxy module is full, the proxy does not delete old items (it tries to store a new item first, which fails)
• The mod_rewrite module does not compile on AIX
• The dynamic module loading module, mod_dld, does not work very well with the AddModule directive

Bugs fixed in next release:

• The default timeout of IdentityCheck has been reduced from 60 to 30 seconds, to speed up the server when accessed from sites which do not run ident servers (this only affects servers configured to do RFC1413 ident checks)
• When using multiple listeners, a HUP may cause Apache to exit with a "Cannot bind" message, due to uninitialised memory
• 304 or 204 responses were being kept-alive, even if the browser was the buggy Netscape Navigator version (which sets the nokeepalive environment variable).
• Under content negotiation, if no variants are acceptable it returns a list of choices. This list did not include the charset parameters.

Apache is currently in a 'beta release' cycle. This is where it is made available prior to full release for testing by anyone interested. Normally during the beta cycle no new major features will be added. The full release of Apache 1.2 is expected this month.

A new feature in Apache 1.2 has been the ability to set a default virtual host. Normally, any request not handled by any other virtual host is handled by the "main server "configuration - i.e. the configuration outside any <VirtualHost> sections. This configuration is also inherited by all the virtual hosts, which can override it as needed within the <VirtualHost> section. In some cases it might be preferred to give requests which do not match any virtual hosts a different behaviour to that inherited by the real virtual hosts. In 1.2 this can be done by providing a default virtual host. In previous betas, this vhost has been definied by using the fake IP address 255.255.255.255. This was slightly non-obvious, and had the side effect of making Apache try to do a reverse lookup on this address. From 1.2 beta 8 onwards, the default virtual host can be defined by giving the text "_default_" in the <VirtualHost> line, i.e.

  <Virtualhost _default_>

A "Birds of a Feather" session about Apache has been planned for the upcoming 6th WWW conference in Santa Clara, USA. The Apache Developers and Users BOF is scheduled for 8pm on the 8^th April, and will provide an opportunity to talk about Apache with some of the developers and other users.

The official web site of the British Monarchy was launched two weeks ago. It is running on the latest version of Apache (1.2 beta 7), managed by the UK Government' Information Service. To see what server any site is running, use Netcraft's What's that site running? service.