Covalent's Version of Apache 2.0 To Drop Monday

kilaasi points out this CNET story about the planned release on Monday of Apache 2.0, "or at least the version that has proprietary extensions. Covalent sells the core of Apache and its own extensions which make it easier to adapt for specific areas and simpler to administer. Covalent is confident that the next generation Apache is mature and is ready for prime time. Covalent employs some of the core members of the Apache-development-team." XRayX adds a link to Covalent's press release, writing: "It's not clear when the Open Source Edition (or whatever) will come out and I didn't find anything at the official Apache Site." Update: 11/10 16:37 GMT by T : Note that the product name is Covalent Enterprise Ready Server; though it's based on Apache software, this is not Apache 2.0 per se. Thanks to Sascha Schumann of the ASF for the pointer.

Comments

Static PHP + scripts running as users

[chrysalis]

One of the most annoying thing in Apache 1.x is that when PHP is compiled in the server (not run through the CGI), all scripts are running as "www", "nobody", or whatever anonymous user your Apache daemon is running as.
There's no way to have PHP script run as different users (just like what suexec does for spawning CGI external progs) .
Sure, PHP has a so-called "safe-mode", but it's still not that secure, especially when it comes to creating files or acess shared memory pages.
I was told that Apache 2.0 had a mechanism that could make user switching for PHP scripts possible. Has anyone experimented with it?

Re:Static PHP + scripts running as users

[cehf2]

With any application running on a web server there is a trade off between performance and security. because the PHP module is running inside the core of the web server, it should be fairly fast, however if you want the ability to change what users the php scripts run as, your only option is to use CGI scripts. CGI by its very nature is *very* slow. This is due to the overhead of the fork/exec/load program.

You may also be able compile PHP as a FastCGI program, you could then run several external FastCGI's as different users and configure Apache to run the particular script with a particular FastCgi program. I have no idea how to do this with apache, as I use Zeus myself.

If Apache 2 does have a way to switch users for PHP scripts, it will not be secure. Under UNIX, once you have dropped your permissions you can never gain them again. The work around is to have 'real' and 'effective' users that programs run as. As long as you only change your efective user, you can re-gain permissions, but anything can regain permissions. You can also only change users when you are root. This would be a big security hole, in that if there was a buffer overflow attack root could trivially be optained by anyone.

security, performance, configurability - pick 2

Re:At $1495 per CPU

[GC]

Yes quite, for those of you who just want to download Apache 2.0, compile it and have it running by the time you could have bought the package from Covalent, go here

Re:Apache has released 2.0 betas

[huftis]

It's not clear when the Open Source Edition (or whatever) will come out and I didn't find anything at the official Apache Site.

Apache Week has more information on this:

Those waiting since April for a new 2.0 beta will have to keep on waiting after another release candidate, 2.0.27, was abandoned this week when a bug was discovered while running the code on the live apache.org server. Some httpd processes were found to be stuck in infinite loops while reading POST requests; the bug was traced to the code handling request bodies. After fixes for this bug and a build problem on BSD/OS were checked in, the tree was tagged ready for a 2.0.28 release.