Software Update: Apache 2.0.28 Beta

elementTAL points us to a new beta of the Apache 2.0 web server. For windows they have a binary prepared in the form of an MS installer package. For darwin you need a special source tar.gz being picked up. For the other operating systems you would use this package should be able to get by.

Apache 2.0 offers numerous enhancements, improvements and performance boosts over the 1.3 codebase. The most visible and noteworthy addition is the ability to run Apache in a hybrid thread/process mode on any platform that supports both threads and processes. This has been shown to improve the scalability of the Apache HTTPD server significantly on some versions of Unix in our testing. Apache 2.0 also includes support for filtered I/O. This allows modules to modify the output of other modules before it is sent to the client. Finally, we have included support for IPv6 on any platform that supports IPv6. This version of Apache is known to work on many versions of Unix, BeOS, OS/2, and Windows. Because of many of the advancements in Apache 2.0, this release of Apache is expected to perform equally well on all supported platforms.

Changes with Apache 2.0.28

• Fix infinite loop in mod_cgid.c.
  [Dale Ghent , Brian Pane ]

• When no port is given in a “ServerName host” directive, the server_rec->port is now set to zero, not 80. That allows for run-time deduction of the correct server port (depending on SSL/plain, and depending also on the current setting of UseCanonicalName). This change makes redirections work, even with https:// connections. As in Apache-1.3, the connection’s actual port number is never used, only the ServerName setting or the client’s Host: setting. Documentation updated to reflect the change. [Martin Kraemer]
• Add a ‘%” rel=”external”>note-namee’ argument to mod-headers, which works in the same way as mod_log_confg. [Ian Holsman]
• Fix the spelling of the AP_MPMQ_MIN_SPARE_DAEMONS and AP_MPMQ_MAX_REQUESTS_DAEMON macros in ap_mpm.h and all standard MPMs. [Cliff Woolley]
• Introduce htdbm, a user management utility for db/dbm authorization databases. [Mladen Turk ]
• Optimize usage of strlen and strcat in ap_directory_walk.
  [Brian Pane ]