Apache 2.0 Goes Gold!

The Apache Software Foundation's Apache HTTP Server, version 2.0.35, has now been released for General Availability. You can find the official announcement, and download the server, from their website. Be sure to try a mirror first. Congratulations to the HTTP Server Project for getting the final release out. If you are wondering about it being usable in a production environment, you should poke around Slashdot's servers and see if you are surprised (now if only mod_perl was finished we could move more of our servers over to using the new release).

The HTTP Server Project is now recommending this release for use on production websites. 2.0.35 is now considered their best release and should be used in preference to all older versions (including the 1.3 series). A few of the new features are:

• higher performance over 1.3
• multiple operational models: threaded, hybrid multi-processes and multi-threaded
• specific request processing for Windows, Netware, BeOS, and OS/2
• integrated SSL and WebDAV support
• improved HTTP proxy support
• I/O layering and filtering

Comments

The Pipe of Death

[James_G]

*) Remove all signals from the worker MPM's child process. Instead, the parent uses the Pipe of Death for all communication with the child processes. [Ryan Bloom]

The Pipe of Death? Does this conjur up images of developers sitting around a room saying things like.. "Man.. pass the pipe of death.. I need a hit", followed by lots of giggling and an unbelievable craving for chocolate and/or chinese food?

No? Um, ok.. must be just me then..

Re:The Pipe of Death

[Jucius Maximus]

"The Pipe of Death? Does this conjur up images of developers sitting around a room saying things like.. "Man.. pass the pipe of death.. I need a hit", followed by lots of giggling and an unbelievable craving for chocolate and/or chinese food?"

I was thinking more along the lines of 'I will club you over the skull with the pipe of Death. It has +7 attack versus Trolls and +6 defence against Moderators.'

PHP not there yet

[augustz]

Upgrades are a little early unless PHP starts compiling in, especially statically. (A la mod_php without DSO). They're getting close, php 4.2.0 should work I suspect, whenever it or any other previewish release comes out.

Also, be nice to get some good benchmark numbers. Speed / SSL / Dynamic Content seem to be things just about everyone relies on, and it'd be great to have a nice case to move from 1.3. I know the Apache team has made a lot of progress on this, be great to see it validated.

Bravo all around of course.

- August

Changelog

[cscx]

Example of open source at its best:

Changes since 2.0.32-beta:

*) connection.c: changed ++j to j++ in an attempt to fix a bug in mod_rewrite [Brian Pane]

*) connection.c: changed ++i to ++j in honor of myself [Joe Orton]

*) connection.c: fuck you guys, ++i is better [Justin Erenkrantz]

*) connection.c: changed i += 1 to i++ for better performance [Graham Leggett]

*) connection.c: changed i = i + 1 to i += 1 [Ian Holsman]

[...]

Re:I'll poke...

[Raetsel]

Poke some more, you quit too soon.

• GET /article.pl?sid=02/04/06/0216250 HTTP/1.1
• HTTP/1.1 200 OK
  Server: Apache/1.3.20 (Unix) mod_perl/1.25 mod_gzip/1.3.19.1a
  X-Powered-By: Slash 2.003000
  X-Fry: Where's Captain Bender? Off catastrophizing some other planet?

• GET /Slashdot/pc.gif?article,1018062768900 HTTP/1.1
• HTTP/1.1 200 OK
  Server: Apache/1.3.17 (Unix)

• GET /banner/cdig0001en.gif?1018062768915 HTTP/1.1
• HTTP/1.1 200 OK
  Server: Apache/2.0.35 (Unix)

Well, there's the first one at least. Looks like their banner ad server's on 2.0+. I don't feel like formatting the rest of the logfile, but there are a couple more in there.

I'll run Apache 2.0

[Saint Aardvark]

when its version number is the same as my Linux 7.2.

Re:I'll run Apache 2.0

[Anonymous Coward]

You're still using Linux 7.2? You should switch to the new AOL 8.0, it's better.

Journalistic ethics in action... ;-)

[stienman]

Of course, when it's something Slashdot depends on, they not only wait for the official announcement, they wait until they've downloaded it before printing it!

:-D

-Adam

too much spare time methinks

[rtscts]

If only the Linux kernel changelog was so detailed (it'd be bigger than the kernel itself)

Apache: *) connection.c: changed ++i to ++j in honor of myself [Joe Orton]

LinuxKernel: VM tweaks [read: ripped the arse out of the kernel and replaced it with someone else's]

Re:Configuration, setup?

[cliffwoolley]

Check out my Linux Magazine article from January, which was just posted online recently.</shameless plug>

The short answer to your question: while yes, you can probably get your 1.3 config to work without *too* many changes, you should spend a bit more time exploring Apache 2.0, or you'll miss out on a lot of the benefits.

The configuration is totally different; it uses GNU autoconf now instead of the home-grown APACI system. The two have many similarities, but you should peruse all of the

./configure --help

options carefully.

The perchild MPM (which provides the configurable userid per Apache child process that you mention) is possibly not yet working; it's still classified as experimental. But we'll probably be getting that cleaned up within another release or two.

Semi-stable working PHP

[SiMac450]

Well, neither 4.1.2 or 4.2.0RC2 worked for me with Apache 2.0. However, I have a simple solution. I just stole the CVS copy of the apache2filter (well, actually only the .h, .c, and .m4 files) and put it with 4.1.2 and it works perfectly. See it in action at http://simonster.com/. If you're too lazy to do this procedure yourself, I have a source archive at http://simonster.com/php-4.1.2.tar.gz

For installation, I found that the easiest thing to do is to add

AddOutputFilter PHP .php
AddInputFilter PHP .php

Somewhere in the document and, for indexes,

AddType text/html .php

before the DirectoryIndex (which must be modified to add index.php). The CVS version works also, but I had problems with some scripts under it. Hope this helps. SiMac450