In this issue

Apache Site: www.apache.org
Release: 1.3.6 (Released 25^th March 1999) (local download sites)
Beta: None

Apache 1.3.6 is the current stable release. Users of Apache 1.3.4 and earlier on Unix systems should upgrade to this version. Read the Guide to 1.3.6 for information about changes between 1.3.4 and 1.3.6 and between 1.2 and 1.3.6.

Most bugs listed below include a link to the entry in the Apache bug database where the problem is being tracked. These entries are called "PR"s (Problem Reports). Some bugs do not correspond to problem reports if they are found by developers.

These bugs have been found in 1.3.6 and will be fixed in the next release. Because of the major differences between Windows and Unix, these are separated into bugs which affect Windows systems only, and other bugs (which may affect Windows as well). Unix users can ignore the bugs listed in the Windows section.

Windows-specific Bugs

• Apache would not run if either the Apache binary or the configuration file had spaces in the path or filenames.
• The option, apache -k now causes a restart to occur immediately without losing connections from the listen queue.

• Apache was not correctly handling Expect: 100-continue headers when an error was due to be returned. PR#3806, PR#4499
• DSO support on Linux 2 systems are now built correctly (using the -shared flag to gcc).
• The "Vary" response header field is now parsed by Apache before it is sent to the browser. This is to work around the problems found in some browsers when vary fields were either not combined or consisted of duplicate tokens.

Patches for bugs in Apache 1.3.6 will be made available in the apply_to_1.3.6 subdirectory of the patches directory on the Apache site. Some new features and other unofficial patches are available in the 1.3 patches directory. For details of all previously reported bugs, see the Apache bug database and known bugs pages. Many common configuration questions are answered in the Apache FAQ.

A patch has been submitted that allows CGI scripts to run non-buffered on the NT platform. Because the patch relies on using named pipes, CGI output on Windows 95 and 98 remains buffered. Unix versions of Apache have provided non-buffered CGI output by default since version 1.3. In Apache version 1.2 all output was buffered unless special nph scripts were used.

The mod_usertrack module can be used to set a cookie. A patch has been submitted to add a new directive, CookieDomain. By setting the domain of the cookie it can be picked up by other sites in the same subdomain allowing a consistent way of tracking users across servers.

A new release of the Apache web server is expected to be available for general download next week. This version fixes some of the problems and bugs that we've mentioned over the past few months as well as adding a few small features. We will have a full round-up of the new release in the next edition of Apache Week.