Apache Server Nears 2.0

An Anonymous Coward writes: "The Apache httpd project has released a new beta of their apache 2.0 server (v32)". For those who have not been following the 2.0 development, this is the third beta that has been produced. The new version of Apache sports the new APR API and a new method for filtered I/O, and has been rewritten to make use of a hybrid thread/process model. With Covalent already selling a commercial version of 2.0, hopefully we will see a full release of the open source version in the near future.

Comments

Apache 2.0 Threads

[TurboRoot]

The main benefit of Apache in the first place is the stability benefited from the fork() nature of it.

Apache 2.0 brings some nice and intresting new features that only a multithreaded server can bring, but these are all features already available in tons of other web servers..

Unfortuantly, the programmers working on Apache 2.0 don't know how to write thread safe code. Don't believe me? Go get the source yourself, cuddle up to a posix threading book and pull out a 100% correct threading library. (Like the FreeBSD one.) :)

Example... DONT USE SLEEP(3) in a multithreaded application!.. but whatever :)

What I am basically saying is.. I would't get apache 2.0 for production _yet_. Someday Apache 2.0 will be the model for how a stable multithreaded multi-protocol server can be written.

By the way, I normally don't take time out to actually post. But since my moderation and meta moderation privs were removed since i moderated a post I found intresting.. to be intresting. (The great slashdot troll investigation). About 500 people lost their moderation ability at that time. What a nice brave new world.

The advance is. I can now say what I truely feel and not care about karma.. because this place is a joke. :)

Re:Apache 2.0 Threads

[Fweeky]

> a 100% correct threading library. (Like the FreeBSD one.)

FreeBSD's threading it actually supposed to be rather smelly - just ask on freebsd-hackers or so.

This is why Apache 2 on FreeBSD is best off sticking with the prefork MPM. The introduction of KSE's in -current will alleviate this, but that's still heavily in development.

MSI Installer == Spiffy

[justin_w_hall]

First off, I have to rant about how much I love their precompiled MSI builds. Convincing my boss that installing a webserver to replace IIS would be easy was about 3 million times earlier with that... run it, click thru the wizard, once-over the config file and you're up. Now you, too, can escape the IIS headaches in less than five minutes!

With that said, has anyone tried the MSI for this latest beta? It didn't create the service for me automatically, and I wasn't sure if it was just my crackpipe or if it was an actual problem. Bug report's been filed already, just wanted to see if anyone else had any input...

perchild MPM

[slamb]

I'm a little disappointed by Apache 2.0 so far.

I've been looking forward to the perchild MPM. It can run different server processes under different UID/GIDs. This is important because mod_{perl,php,python,snake} run in-process with the Apache server. It's the only way to run them securely for different people other than a completely seperate webserver for each person (with its own IP address, configuration file, memory footprint, etc.)

But perchild doesn't really work:

• It's not portable to non-Linux platforms. (There was talk on the mailing list of marking it experimental because of this.)
• It hasn't compiled (even on Linux) out of the box in several releases. In 2.0.29, easy to fix but still doesn't work right. (Not compiling is a sure sign it hasn't been maintained.) Not quite as easy on 2.0.32. There's a patch, but it doesn't look right to me.
• It's easy to misconfigure it into running virtual hosts as root. (Bug report)

So, Apache 2.0 may be promising in the future...but when a feature I've been looking forward to for a long time is broken, I'm kind of disappointed.

Re:Apache 2 is going to kick ass

[Electrum]

I've been using Apache 2 on Linux and FreeBSD for about 2 months now (...), and IMHO it is really going to rock the server world.

This isn't meant to be a flame, but a genuine complaint of the Apache web server that I haven't seen adequately addressed anywhere. How can Apache claim to be a modern web server if it continues to use an outdated request model? Having a separate process or thread for each request is completely unnecessary. Even for a site with dynamic content, the majority of the requests will be for static content (images). So why use up system resources when not necessary?

A request for static content is essentially just moving data from one file descriptor to a socket, something that sendfile(2) can be used for on operating systems that implement it. If a single system call combined with a select(2) loop can handle the majority of the requests, then why is each request tying up a process or a thread? When reading the Apache mailing lists, you get answers such as "it's too difficult for other programmers to extend the server", "processes or threads don't have to be expensive depending on how the operating system implements them", "everyone is happy with how it works now", and "Apache is meant to be correct first and fast second". None of these address the issue that Apache's request model is flawed, and it will never be high performance until it is corrected.

Additionally, the Zeus Web Server is well implemented and doesn't suffer from any of the problems that seem to keep Apache from being implemented correctly. It's also better than Apache in every way, ranging from performance to configuration (with the exception of not being open source). Zeus did everything right and built a great web server. Years later, Apache is just now getting their next version into beta, and it seems to be just as fundamentally flawed as the first version. If there is ever an open source web server as high quality as Zeus, then it more than likely won't be Apache.