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Comments: 217 +- Technology: G-WAN, Another Free Web Server on Sunday November 29, @05:30PM
Posted
by
kdawson
on Sunday November 29, @05:30PM
from the dioing-it-in-a-hundred-k dept.
from the dioing-it-in-a-hundred-k dept.
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mssmss writes "Has anyone used G-WAN — a free (as in beer), supposedly fast and scalable Web server? The downside is it supports only C scripts, which the author claims is a plus since most programmers know C anyway. There is currently only a Windows release and no clear answer in their FAQs whether there would be Linux/Solaris releases. As an interesting aside, releasing a Web server while at the same time fighting a losing battle (PDF) with a large bank over a piracy claim of $200 million (the bank is alleged to have done the piracy) is quite a feat."
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Big Plus! (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, writing scripts in C is a great idea.
That's why no [perl.org] scripting [php.net] languages [python.org] were ever invented, and C is the natural [apache.org] choice [microsoft.com] for any web framework.
History is on the author's side here. He can't lose!
Re:Big Plus! (Score:5, Funny)
i C your point
-1 Bad Pun
Parent
Re:Big Plus! (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Big Plus! (Score:5, Interesting)
Absolutely. What makes me especially excited about trying G-WAN is that whenever it crashes I'll have the extra fun of figuring out whether the reason it crashed was because my own C code crashed, or because the code in his web server crashed.
Finding where a program crashed is way easier than finding a logic error, and those can occur in any language. Actually, debugging crashes can lead to discovery of certain kinds of logic and/or runtime errors that would be difficult to find if your runtime environment is protecting you from ever seeing a crash (heaven forbid).
I'm as much a fan of high-level languages, nice runtime environments, and useful abstractions as anyone, but I also happen to think that C gets more flak than it deserves. I really think universities are doing their graduates a disservice by educating them in the safe, comfortable confines of Java if they don't also teach them C. In my own subjective experience, the most capable and successful programmers I know (in any environment) are also the ones who are very comfortable in environments without garbage collection and restricted memory access.
Parent
Re:Big Plus! (Score:4, Insightful)
Finding where a program crashed is way easier than finding a logic error, and those can occur in any language. Actually, debugging crashes can lead to discovery of certain kinds of logic and/or runtime errors that would be difficult to find if your runtime environment is protecting you from ever seeing a crash (heaven forbid).
Except when your non-protected runtime doesn't crash and instead overwrites the stack, corrupts the malloc arena or writes to a dangling pointer causing corruption in a completely unrelated part of the program. Hours and hours of fun!
One of the most important thing that managed programming languages brought is the fact that other parts of the program can't corrupt the system enough to make things undebuggable and that an error in a module is self-contained enough that it can't trample other parts of the program due to a memory error.
I do agree though that C and other unmanaged languages should still be taught.
Parent
On the plus side ... (Score:3, Insightful)
Finally a platform with built-in buffer overflow support!
Let the exploits games begin!
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
---
Web Servers [feeddistiller.com] Feed @ Feed Distiller [feeddistiller.com]
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Yes, writing scripts in C is a great idea.
It's certainly not a new idea ...
Minimal webserver, written in C, supporting C scripts ... [annexia.org]
Re:Big Plus! (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm baffled that you point to using C as the root reason that your developers' code had less bugs. Speed I'll concede, but not bugs. Give your guys some credit. I'll bet them using C isn't why they write good code.
Parent
Are you fucking kidding me? (Score:5, Informative)
I asked him to explain why stable versions (some of these stable releases were several years old, too) of the software he was recommending contained over 100 bug fixes. He couldn't provide a suitable answer, and thus management gave him the boot. And so we're not using Drupal.
You are out of your mind. Bug fixes to a stable release is your metric of quality?
May I ask what OS you guys are using in your bug-free paradise? You know, the OS that doesn't need any bug fixes after release. That one. I'd like to go buy myself a copy because that sure sounds great.
Parent
Re:Are you fucking kidding me? (Score:5, Funny)
I asked him to explain why stable versions (some of these stable releases were several years old, too) of the software he was recommending contained over 100 bug fixes. He couldn't provide a suitable answer, and thus management gave him the boot. And so we're not using Drupal.
If the elevated number of bug fixes is a concern to you, I can provide you with my own customized version of Drupal without any bugfixes in it for a reasonable fee. That is the beauty of open source.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
> software he was recommending contained over 100 bug fixes
So, did you guys replace windows, exchange, office with other products? Wait a minute...
Oops, my bad. You were talking about Joomla and Drupal. Somehow I did a mental s/Joomla/windows/g;s/Drupal/Office/g' in my head - subconsciously, I might add. And the whole time I was like - "Those bastards! The SP[123] and the freggin updates.windows.com" and not letting me shut down my computer without applying patches every other day (or so it seems)... But
Re:Big Plus! (Score:4, Insightful)
That's crazy. I think that consultant dodged a bullet by avoiding having to work with you guys.
Parent
Value? (Score:5, Interesting)
Where's the value/point in releasing another limited-utility webserver?
I see the point in having a few options for a particular category, so that you can choose between different optimizations for things like cost, performance, and compatibility. But why something of limited utility (only runs C scripts) compatibility (only runs on 'doze) AND cost? (not OSS, but it's free!)
I don't know. Even with a fairly "heavy" web server such as Apache, the performance increases by going with another "lighter" platform seldom represent more than a year or so of hardware advance.
So.... Why?
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
So.... Why?
afaik, the main reason for giving it away for free is: its author needs much traffic on his site, in order to hide some very secret traffic happening there.
hard to believe, but this is what he pretends!
so, please, download it, even if you don't plan to use it :-)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Only if it does something of value.
I recall a very lightweight web server that some large outfit uses to serve up images. That's it. only images. Apparently it made things speed up significantly.
I don't see G-WAN being anything special, though.
The real question... (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:The real question... (Score:5, Insightful)
The question is WHY THE FUCK DID IT MAKE SLASHDOT?
Numerous people on this site have loudly proclaimed "Alternatives are great!!!" and have had their comments modded up for it.
Parent
Re:The real question... (Score:4, Funny)
Alternatives are great!!!
Parent
Re:The real question... (Score:4, Insightful)
So the guy wants to write a web server to scratch an itch or something. No big deal there. The question is WHY THE FUCK DID IT MAKE SLASHDOT?
C'mon. Whenever some new Linux distribution (or variant on an existing distro) is announced, it automatically becomes a Slashdot submission. Why should it be any different with new web servers?
Of course, whenever we have those HIGYALD (Hey, I've Got Yet Another Linux Distro) stories, there is always at least one post similar to yours, asking why it's news. And there's always at least one response to that post, explaining that alternatives are great - which is true here as well, so the circle is now complete.
Parent
Spite? (Score:3, Interesting)
It looks like this chap has a grudge against Microsoft (he says his company was "eradicated from the market the usual way", apparently by Microsoft) so he wrote this webserver to hit them "where it hurts".
I don't know if spite is the best motivation to write excellent software.
Re:Spite? (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't know how writing a web server that requires a Microsoft OS exactly hits them "where it hurts"
Parent
Re:Spite? (Score:5, Interesting)
Not just against Microsoft, this guy just seems to be full of piss and vinegar in general. Every entry in his blog [gwan.com] is a rant against something, whether it's Microsoft, the world economy, the Western Hemisphere, or those stealthy, mysterious corporate hacker ninjas who spend every waking hour trying to take down his ironclad website due to the obvious danger he poses to The Man.
Even the software's FAQ [gwan.com] takes cheap shots at the objects of his vast paranoia. Stay far, far away from anyone with that big a chip on their shoulder.
Parent
Help me out here (Score:5, Insightful)
Why does the world need a non-free web server that only runs on Windows when there's already plenty of free (as in speech) ones out there (http://www.apache.org/ [apache.org], http://www.lighttpd.net/ [lighttpd.net]) that run everywhere?
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
But I think the point is that, since you need Windows to run G-WAN, then you've already paid for IIS, so why the need for a different closed-source (but free as in beer) web server?
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Speed and security. The endless permutations and add-ons to Apache do, in fact, cause a significant security and compatibility and performance burden, much as the endless and often poorly written add-ons to Perl create similar issues. The idea can be taken to extremes, but how many of todays Perl and PHP website scripting security issues would evaporate if the authors were forced to write in a less flexible language that took a few moments to actually compile before being enabled?
Re: (Score:2)
The idea can be taken to extremes, but how many of todays Perl and PHP website scripting security issues would evaporate if the authors were forced to write in a less flexible language that took a few moments to actually compile before being enabled?
Re:Help me out here (Score:5, Insightful)
how many of todays Perl and PHP website scripting security issues would evaporate if the authors were forced to write in a less flexible language that took a few moments to actually compile before being enabled?
None. Contrary to popular belief, lower-level languages don't make shitty programmers competent.
Parent
Re:Help me out here (Score:4, Insightful)
But those lower level programmers are not getting the experience that turns them into good programmers. They're cutting and pasting bad code and propagating errors which are nightmarish to track down after the fact. And yes, I'm trusting the language designer to write a good _compiler_ to write small utilities, well written, rather than presenting every programmer with that stunning mass of debris I find coming out of places like CPAN.
We should not resist new tools for good programmers. We should resist toolboxes that include that many slightly different hammers, many of which are liable to break and many of which have handles likely to slip in the grip of a normal user, sending a large and spinning object flying towards anyone working near them. I'm afraid I've been that person near them and struck with those handles too many times in the last five years, and from observation, far too many of the scripting language authors need to go back and be _mentored_ in how to do efficient or even safe code, because they certainly didn't learn it dealing with Perl.
For examples of the insanity, I'll point you directly to mod_perl itself and resolving which versions of mod_perl itself are compatible with your project. Though that utility was written in C, it has to deal with a lot of Perl's vagaries, and it can be very awkward to coordinate multiple old and new Perl utilities with a single mod_perl release.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Forcing them to use C for web development won't change that; you'll see websites that leak memory like a sieve, open supposedly read-only files in read-write mode and then reuse that pointer (which the coder doesn't notice because he only ever tested with th
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Maybe some but C as a text generation and processing language (which is the basic function of CGI) is definitely a very bad choice. C strings are inherently fault-prone.
In Perl or PHP you do $y .= " $x \n"; and it is totally fault-proof. It is easy and straightforward, and totally foolproof. Now write something like that in C. Allocate buffers for x and y, check for overflows, reallocate if buffers are too short, make sure the number of arguments matches the format string, and within maybe 15 lines have the
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Your points would be warranted if:
1) CPAN were Perl itself.
2) CPAN were atypical for a collection of useful modules for any programming language.
3) C were better.
10. subnet? (Score:2)
in its report made on May 26th, 2006 M. MARC MORTIER from BEFTI reckons that "the 10.249.17.10 network address belongs to the address range of FINAMA bank", and that his "laptop is using the 10.249.24.60 IP address".
If their claims are based on the assumption that 10.249.*.* is a Finama bank owned IP subnet, then they are in trouble.
Re: (Score:2)
From the open letter to the French president [google.com] (Google Docs PDF), although the English takes some effort to comprehend:
GROUPAMA is not offended at seing the bailiff JEAN-CLAUDE DAIGREMONT and the judicial expert JEAN-MARIE HUOT in charge of the seizure of September 7th, 2005 at 22-28 Joubert street PARIS 9th, refusing to seize evidences pretexting that they did not exist (they reported that the 10.249.x.x network did not exist) -a fact that their own official report denies (a FINAMA bank router returned the 10.249.80.49 network address -FOUR TIMES).
They do appear to be referring to the internal network of FINAMA bank.
Re:10. subnet? (Score:5, Insightful)
That would be like saying "the fifth floor is in our building, not a public street address, so this warrant is useless". I bet that would be a useful bit of precedent to establish for lots of people who are served with search warrants. Given the router information mentioned in the article, and the settings of the laptop with an address in the address space, it's unsurprising that our plaintiff was upset that those machines did not get reported or searched properly.
Parent
I dont exactly see the points (Score:2)
People claim Apache is slow, but why not using a reverse proxy like Varnish to "speed it up" and still keep the features. I really see no reason why I should use G-WAN or lighttpd.
Re: social networking (Score:3, Informative)
I'm also a sysadmin at a social networking site with highly dynamic content. Unfortunately, Varnish won't help much because over 90% of the cumulative CPU time is ate up by the MySQL server.
WTF? (Score:2)
Sorry, but I won't run a HTTP server where the author think running native code extensions with no security checks is good.
IIS (Score:3, Insightful)
If you're going to be "scripting" in C on Windows you might as well go fully compiled with IIS (free with any Windows OS you'd be running on a server) and C# (Express version also free). Get MySQL with ODBC and you're all set.
I use PHP on Apache for flexibility. If I wanted to use C I'd compile it.
It can't even talk http properly (Score:4, Informative)
His server returns 404 for errors:
http://www.gwan.com/csp_crash.html [gwan.com]
That's going to make wirting for this thing really confusing.
Re:It can't even talk http properly (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh geez. He's returning Error 404 when a script crashes? That means he can't be bothered to find the list of HTTP status codes [thinkgeek.com], because if he did he'd see that 404 is clearly the wrong choice. It also means he can't be bothered to look at other implementations, because then he'd have noticed that popular servers such as Apache and IIS return Error 500 when scripts are broken.
From this we can conclude that he probably hasn't read the HTTP protocol specification (because it'd be hard to read the spec but miss the list of status codes), and he has no idea how current servers work (so instead of copying their good ideas, he'll be reinventing his own broken wheels).
And from THAT we can conclude that his browser is a steaming pile of crap. The reason it's not open source is probably because he's afraid that somebody would read his code and make fun of him for it.
Heh, check out the actual 404 error message - it's malformed HTML 2.0! If you're going to go to the trouble of including a DOCTYPE declaration, you ought to at least validate the code.
Parent
Ah g-wan... (Score:3, Funny)
... g-wan, g-wan, g-wan
G-wan, g-wan, g-wan, g-wan, g-wan
Mrs Doyle approves
Few people can do string processing in C (Score:3, Insightful)
Only very few people can do string processing in C. Actually I believe more people can do string processing in assembler than in C, as with assembler you see where the problems are whereas C makes you believe it has some kind of string support.
I sent a message via his error log (Score:3, Informative)
I can't tell if sane or not but it certainly sounds like he is putting much effort into some software.
So it would help to defuse the impression of insanity that most of the posters here are suggesting. He doesn't sound insane at least not for a French programmer who has left the country due to corruption apparently.
Personally I would suggest an online explanation in more detail of two points:
1) Would he offer source to a company/institution that will sign an NDA? I bet he would sell it to say Facebook if they wanted to compile their own.
It isn't a crime to do closed source software although to my mind not offering the source in any way is going to slow adoption.
2) I took the time to read the blog and pdfs. His legal problems seems to have started when he caught a bank using his software. See: groupama.pdf [remoteanything.com]
This refers to software he makes (in Switzerland now), Remote Anything [remote-anything.com]
Okay. First, the pdf shows they have installed packs of 65535 units of his software. This makes no sense at all and looks like a dumb programming bug. He doesn't show the evidence he has, or how he got the reports. I imagine he has a phone home routine in his program. This is maybe why it gets called a virus too I could imagine, if that is the app he is talking about. The $200M fine he is seeking is therefore either crazy, a lie, or else based on such strong evidence I can't imagine not mentioning it. I think he needs to explain what the evidence is, how he got it, and why the numbers suggest some binary math errors. He has four lines that look like "64 DS + 256 Masters + 65536 Slaves = 34 million euros" and this is totally crazy. He seems to be suggesting they are using 250,000 clients if I am correct. His own site says Fortune 500 companies often buy tens of thousands of licenses. He should explain the discrepancy.
I think if he does these two things then he could expand his market more. If he doesn't want to go open source fine but comparing it to open source projects then should include this caveat. Maybe he could get a university or famous security company to audit the code.
Re:Why? (Score:5, Funny)
It ups the difficulty level, allowing you to more easily grind on your way towards Web Master III.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Yea but most of those linux distros are just identical code, and many of them persist only because of user behavior and usage patterns that people don't want to change. It's preference more than anything at this point. I like the way Debian does things, so i use that frequently. Others like the way Redhat does things, etc.
This web server is substantially different from all the others, apparently closed source and quite limited from the sound of the summary (which, like TFA, i barely read). This is more like
Re:Okay, is it just me (Score:5, Insightful)
Using C as a "scripting" language. CHECK
Using C as a "scripting" language on a WEB SERVER. CHECK
Writing a non free webserver for windows only with very limited features. CHECK
yep, he's passed the "i'm crazy as a loon" test.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)