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Apache Software

Apache 2.0 Goes Gold! 325

Posted by krow from the hell-freezes-over-news-at-5 dept.
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
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

I'll run Apache 2.0.... More

I'll run Apache 2.0....

Comments Filter:

  • Good news! (Score:4, Funny)

    by quantaman ( 517394 ) on Friday April 05, 2002 @09:39PM (#3294246)
    Now www.wehavethewayout.com [wehavethewayout.com] can upgrade back to a real server now!

  • Well.. (Score:2, Funny)

    by smaug195 ( 535681 )
    It's pretty clear why this is from the from the hell-freezes-over-news-at-5 dept. All those pigs make quite a bit of cold air.

  • The Pipe of Death (Score:5, Funny)

    by James_G ( 71902 ) <james@globalmegac[ ].org ['orp' in gap]> on Friday April 05, 2002 @09:44PM (#3294265)
    *) 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 (Score:5, Funny)

      by Jucius Maximus ( 229128 ) on Friday April 05, 2002 @11:00PM (#3294468) Journal
      "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.'

    • No, you are correct. It does conjure up said images.

      Chocolate cravings... mmm.... those flake ice cream cones are great for those little hunger pangs.

      Hopefully however, the pipe of death will not actually conjure up any child processes. Im not quite at that stage in my life yet.


    • Check the comment for this guy:

      http://httpd.apache.org/contributors/#kasichainu la

      Quite funny :)

  • Playing it safe (Score:4, Funny)

    by Torinaga-Sama ( 189890 ) on Friday April 05, 2002 @09:44PM (#3294266) Homepage
    Or maybe playing it lazy, I will wait a little while longer to upgrade. When I was younger I like being the first kid on my block to get the new toy. Now I am older and I don't even like going outside...

  • Better performance? (Score:3, Funny)

    by Cutriss ( 262920 ) on Friday April 05, 2002 @09:44PM (#3294269) Homepage
    higher performance over 1.3

    Really? I guess we'll find out in just a few minutes exactly *how* much more performance 2.0 has over 1.3... :)
    • On that note this discussion seems be be shared between this this story [slashdot.org]and this poll! [slashdot.org], I don't know which one you origionally posted too but you have a comment in both!! (well at least until they fix the bug and then I'll by moderated into oblivion:)

    • Re:Better performance? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by jellomizer ( 103300 ) on Saturday April 06, 2002 @12:53PM (#3295732)
      Well I decided to give a quick speed test. This is not scienctific Data I bet there are flaws in my testing and it is NOT REAL WORLD APPS. But my Test gave the results that Apache 2 is about 13% faster then 1.3.

      This is what I did. On a Sun Ultra 10 I installed Apache 1.3 and 2.0 (Latest of both and compiled them using the same compilers)
      port 80 was Apache 2.0
      port 8080 was Apache 1.3

      Then I used Lynx -dump http://localhost:0080 > /dev/null

      and recorded the time it would take to do 3000 connections

      then I did the same but on port 8080

      and recorded the time

      it took 2.28 for apache 2
      2.63 for apache 1.3

      so 2.0 is roughly 13% faster.

      This was testing 1 connection at a time not multable connections.

      • port 80 was Apache 2.0
        port 8080 was Apache 1.3

        Want to test it under load? Just follow up with the URL. I'm sure many here will accomodate you.
      • A better test would be http_load [acme.com], since it tests multiple connections in parallel. I don't know of a test client that does multiple connections and utilizes persistent connections, but that would be ideal for load testing. But, of course, Apache's is inherently limited to the number of connections it can handle, due to using a separate thread/process for each connection.
        • But, of course, Apache's is inherently limited to the number of connections it can handle, due to using a separate thread/process for each connection

          Hmmh. I may be wrong but:

          A few of the new features are: ... * multiple operational models: threaded, hybrid multi-processes and multi-threaded

          Does this not indicate that this is not necessarily true any more? Plus, on some platforms limitation is pretty high, esp. for threads ('full' processes usually have lower limits).

          • Either way, it takes a thread or a process for each connection. Even with dynamic content, most of your content is static (i.e. images). For static content, you need a non blocking server that runs in a single process to get the best performance. And the majority of the high traffic sites on the net (adult sites) have lots of images. Thus it makes sense to have a non blocking core, and only use threads or processes for things that are more difficult to do in a single process. Better yet, leave all that stuff out of the server entirely, and use an API designed to be high performance and non blocking friendly: FastCGI. But Apache can stay a toy, and those of us that need high performance will have to continue paying for a closed source, real web server: Zeus. The Apache developers can complain all they want about how it's too hard to do and isn't necessarily the best way, while continuing to ignore the best web server available. Oh, and where's my easy to use mass virtual hosting, good config file format and web configuration tool?

            And if you think this is a troll, then go play with Zeus for a day, and you'll see why Apache is nothing more than a toy.

      • As a sidenote, apache (atleast 1.3) series ships with its own benchmarking tool called ab. So, while you where writing a shellscript to time the requests, you could have just written:

        ab -n 3000 -w http://localhost:8080 ab -n 3000 -w http://localhost:80

        Another sidenote, few issues back in the Linux Magazine was article about Apache 2.0 and it gave me a quite good impression what apache 2.0 is all about but it also left me with feeling that 2.0 is not performing as fast as 1.3 because of new modularity in pretty much every phase of the server processing the request it takes... Hell, article even said that with a little coding, you could turn apache 2.0 to working imap server!

  • PHP not there yet (Score:5, Informative)

    by augustz ( 18082 ) on Friday April 05, 2002 @09:47PM (#3294278)
    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
    • I couldn't tell if previewish was an actual word so I did a search on google for it.

      previewish [google.com]

      Almost a googlewhack. But it's not a real word so it's a googlethud.

    • Semi-stable working PHP (Score:5, Informative)

      by SiMac450 ( 571584 ) <(simonk) (at) (mac.com)> on Saturday April 06, 2002 @01:14AM (#3294741) Homepage
      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/ [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 [simonster.com]

      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

  • Given the readership of slashdot, there *had* to be *someone* who installed the old version recently. But I swear I just finished compiling this an hor ago!
  • "you should poke around Slashdot's servers and see if you are surprised"

    Slashdot is running

    Apache/1.3.20 (unix)
    mod_perl/1.25
    mod_gzip/1.3.1.19.1a

    I'll look around some more...

    • Re:I'll poke... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Raetsel ( 34442 ) on Friday April 05, 2002 @10:23PM (#3294373)

      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.

  • What about appropriate version of tomcat? I'm hoping that since there is real current dev on that at the moment, that it should work when I try later this weekend.... but all the jakarta doc says apache 1.3...

    Any one try it yet?

  • Changelog (Score:5, Funny)

    by cscx ( 541332 ) on Friday April 05, 2002 @10:11PM (#3294342) Homepage
    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:Changelog (Score:2, Funny)

      by benedict ( 9959 )
      I hope Mr. Leggett wasn't serious.

    • too much spare time methinks (Score:5, Funny)

      by rtscts ( 156396 ) on Friday April 05, 2002 @11:12PM (#3294493)
      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:Changelog (Score:3, Funny)

      by cpeterso ( 19082 )

      this explains it. No wonder Apache was stuck on version 1 for so long!! ;)

  • Goes gold?

    When did they sell 100,000 copies?

  • The official mirrors haven't rsync'd yet. Anyone mind posting a mirror of the sources for this sucker ?

  • Configuration, setup? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Phroggy ( 441 ) <slashdot3@NOsPaM.phroggy.com> on Friday April 05, 2002 @10:31PM (#3294399) Homepage
    What do I need to know about upgrading from 1.3 to 2.0? What's different in the configuration? Any changes in the way the files are laid out by default? Will my existing httpd.conf work without modification? Would that be a stupid thing to try?

    I thought I heard somewhere that 2.0 might make it possible to have PHP scripts with per-user permissions, like you can get CGI scripts to do if you use suEXEC to setuid to the appropriate user before executing. This is important for servers with multiple users running their own web sites; even if all your users are trusted not to mess with each other's stuff you can run into icky situations where a PHP script writes to a file that the user then doesn't have FTP access to (so they have to write another PHP script to access it). Did I hear correctly? If so, what's involved in configuring it? If not, does anyone have any workarounds?

    • Re:Configuration, setup? (Score:5, Informative)

      by cliffwoolley ( 506733 ) on Saturday April 06, 2002 @12:59AM (#3294705)
      <shameless plug> Check out my Linux Magazine article [linux-mag.com] 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.

  • KDE 3.0, Apache 2.0, Mozilla 1.0, myownsillyproject 0.0

  • comments split? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by (startx) ( 37027 )
    It appears as if the comments for the story and the poll are the same comments. wierd. anyway, It seems I'm not the only one who has rooted coybow neal's box...
  • Apache 2 is great. I have been testing/playing with it for about 2 years now. I luv the thread/process model. and I luv the built SSL and DAV support. However I would have really loved it, if it had built-in LDAP auth module. When I started testing it initially, there were talks of including the module in the source tree. But they dropped the idea. I have tested several previous releases of Apache 2 and none of them had support for LDAP, nor have I figured out a way yet to compile LDAP auth module into Apache 2 as of yet. Any ideas/thoughts?
    • LDAP support was moved to a subproject of httpd. You can checkout the httpd-ldap tree from anonymous CVS if you like. No guarantees on whether it works at the moment, as I haven't tried it. Guess I should do that sometime soon. ;)

  • I'll run Apache 2.0 (Score:5, Funny)

    by Saint Aardvark ( 159009 ) on Friday April 05, 2002 @10:34PM (#3294413) Homepage Journal
    when its version number is the same as my Linux 7.2.
  • 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

  • Yeeeaah! Do you think this is big enough to win back some numbers for Apache [slashdot.org]? I noticed that when PHP 4 came out, it got a pretty big jump in numbers [php.net] (early-mid 2000). Apache 2 seems like A Big Deal that might punch up the Apache stats.

  • recent benchmarks? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by green pizza ( 159161 ) on Friday April 05, 2002 @11:13PM (#3294498) Homepage
    I'm curious as to how Apache 2.0 stacks up against Apache 1.3, as well as recent versions of iPlanet and Zeus. A quick web and usenet search via google found gobs of benchmark results, none of which were newer than about 8 months. Anyone have some links to modern bechmark results... or a pointer to a "good" opensource httpd benchmark tool (or anything other than SPECweb99)?

    • Apache will never run as fast as iPlanet or Zeus because it is more sophisticated. It's definitely better than Apache 1.3 as of late, though. Look through the archives for dev@httpd.apache.org and search for a message from Brian Pane a week or two ago when we were putting the finishing touches on the bucket brigades API work... he posted some performance comparisons there.

      As for iPlanet and Zeus ... maybe in Apache 2.1 or 3.0 or whenever we get the async I/O MPM that we've been talking about, then we'll come closer. But still, you just have to expect that it's a tradeoff: do you want ultra-fast performance on a fairly simple web server, or do you want really good performance on highly customizable web server?

  • the image servers run on this (Score:4, Informative)

    by JDizzy ( 85499 ) on Friday April 05, 2002 @11:22PM (#3294509) Homepage Journal
    I can remember krow [slashdor.org] (aka Brian Aker [tangent.org]) tell me in IRC [openprojects.net] about how he setup apache2 to just server images. Like the most simple thing you can do. It requires no special threading, or proces modes, just http1.1. At most, they can do geographic ad targeting with revers DNS lookups tied to the image servers. Blah... still not that special, but at least they can say they run apache2. I have also read where he claims apache2 is't ready for prime time. This is very telling, not because he is senior Slashdot developer, but more because he is known best for his apache 1.3 modules, such as mod_mp3 [tangent.org], or mod_layout.
    • Can Slashdot use Apache 2.0 as the web server for images? Sure, no problem.
      Could we run the core of Slashdot on it? No.
      The problem is that Apache by itself is pretty much worthless in today's web environment by itself. You need other modules like mod_perl, PHP, and such to really make any use of it.
      Till they are stable and are in production form Apache 2.0 is pretty much useless from my perspective.
      Perspective is completly needs related and should not be considered a sweeping statement about said product nor should it be seen as an endorsement nor as a warning. Supply your own batteries to said opinion and do not feed after midnight.

  • CowboyNeal (Score:3, Funny)

    by vlad_petric ( 94134 ) on Friday April 05, 2002 @11:51PM (#3294558) Homepage

    It should be: "on CowboyNeal, which I rooted"

    Got root?
    The Raven.
  • So, are the next versions of RedHat, Mandrake, SuSE, etc. going to be released with an Apache 2 package?

  • Where do they recommend to use 2.0 over 1.3.24? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by pwagland ( 472537 ) on Saturday April 06, 2002 @07:31AM (#3294933) Journal
    httpd.apache.org [apache.org] has this to say: (my emphasis)
    Apache 1.3.24 is the best version of Apache currently available; everyone running 1.2.X servers or earlier are strongly urged to upgrade to 1.3, as there will not be any further 1.2.X releases. At present, the Win32 port of Apache is not as stable as the UNIX version.
    and also
    Apache 2.0 offers numerous enhancements, improvements and performance boosts over the 1.3 codebase
    But nowhere do they actually say that 2.0.35 is their best release. At least not yet, maybe they will change their website in the future....
    • httpd.apache.org has this to say: (my emphasis)
      Apache 1.3.24 is the best version of Apache currently available

      ...unless you want to send multiple Set-Cookie headers from mod_perl in a single response, in which case you're better off with an earlier version because this (pretty basic) functionality is broken in 1.3.24 (see the apache mailing list(s) for more details).

  • Anybody know about any good books covering Apache 2?

    I found one book last time I went to the bookshop, but all it contained was listings of various config files... It certainly wasn't a lot the author made on her own in there...

  • Kiwi filesystem? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by KjetilK ( 186133 ) <kjetil AT kjernsmo DOT net> on Saturday April 06, 2002 @09:44AM (#3295150) Homepage Journal

    integrated SSL and WebDAV support

    WebDAV seems great when you try to work with larger groups. While I do OK with FTP and similar stuff, I think it would be a nice feature to be able to mount a remote WebDAV directory, and it seems like this is available in the form of Kiwi Filesystem [stanford.edu]

    Does anybody have any experience with this software? Has it been included in any distros?

    • Re:Kiwi filesystem? (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Whyzzi ( 319263 )
      No experience with Kiwi, or even WebDAV on Apache, But I am using WebDAV on IIS 5 (Windows 2000 Server) to update my site using MacroMedia Dream Weaver UltraDev 4. WebDAV is a nice feature to have if your website is not database backed. Setup and security is straightforward as well.

    • Re:Kiwi filesystem? (Score:4, Informative)

      by crisco ( 4669 ) on Saturday April 06, 2002 @04:36PM (#3296521) Homepage
      I've used the WebDAV module with Apache on both Windows and Linux systems to offer things like a quick and dirty remote file share, a private Yahoo briefcase-ish service and as another poster describes, uploading websites. WebDAV is not only cross platform, a client comes with IE 4 and later. As a part of MS 'integration', the WebDAV servers appear as a 'Web Folder' or a 'Network Place' inside Windows Explorer. This allows you to set something up and provide simple instructions for those that glaze over when you start talking about protocols or installing new software. Of course, Microsoft doens't quite implement things perfectly so I've had some bizarre issues with Windows98 refusing to connect to a server but for the most part it works very well.

      I haven't used the Kiwi File System though.

  • apt-get (Score:2, Insightful)

    by MikeyO ( 99577 )
    The obvious missing option for me is:

    I'll run apache 2.0 when apt-get upgrade decides i will.

  • i'll run it when... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Bandito ( 134369 )
    debian packages it up for download.
  • it's good enuf for me. :P

  • Oh joy. (Score:3, Informative)

    by EvlPenguin ( 168738 ) on Saturday April 06, 2002 @11:31AM (#3295465) Homepage
    Great. And unless you need to run something on the scale of slashdot (in terms of cgi dirty work/complexity) I would much rather run thttpd [acme.com]. It's faster and smaller, with much less overhead and much (much) more secure. I've never needed all the bells and whistles of apache, and I doubt 80% of the people who use apache do.
    • Plenty of people want dynamically driven sites; something httpd isn't aimed for.

      Personally I use quite a few of the features of Apache; mod_php (thttpd has this, but each script blocks the server, Not Good[tm] unless your scripts are trivial), mod_proxy (Outside world -> FreeBSD/Apache -> WinXP/Apache, appears as part of my web tree, nice and clean), mod_rewrite (how anyone can put up with the crappy URL's dynamic sites like I don't know, a 1:1 mapping of URL's to the filesystem is bad enough) and mod_gzip (does thttpd support any content negotiation?) to name the main ones, and this is just a miniscule personal server :)
    • Yet thttpd _sucks_ compared to tux which is what you should run if you only want static content.

      In fact, if you just need to serve up a bit of dynamic content, you can run apache and tux together and tux will forward requests for dynamic content to apache.

      Tux is BTW, the fastest web server according to SpecWeb. Nough said.

  • Roxen (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Trevin ( 570491 )
    I've managed Apache at work, and Roxen [roxen.com] at home. I still can't say whether one is better than the other, but I do like those RXML tags, so I'm sticking with Roxen for now.

  • When Slashdot runs it? (Score:4, Funny)

    by plaa ( 29967 ) <sampo.niskanen@ik i . fi> on Saturday April 06, 2002 @02:18PM (#3295984) Homepage
    Isn't Slashdot already running it? I guess it still has a few bugs in it though...

    When mod_perl runs 857 / 649%
    When it becomes 2.1 1008 / 763%
    Brian B spins it urban style 390 / 295%
    Slashdot runs it 708 / 536%
    Already running it, thank you 455 / 344%
    On CowboyNeals box, which I've r00t3d 2594 / 1965%

    132 total votes.

  • Error when building on Solaris 8 (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Isaac-Lew ( 623 ) on Saturday April 06, 2002 @03:16PM (#3296223)
    Ok, apparently I'm having a problem building apache on Solaris 8:

    In file included from /home/isaac/httpd-2.0.35/srclib/apr/atomic/so laris_sparc/apr_atomic_sparc.s:63: /usr/include/sy s/asm_linkage.h:104: `#' operator should be followed by a macro argument name

    (Repeats for several different lines)

    /home/isaac/httpd-2.0.35/srclib/apr/atomic/solari s_sparc/apr_atomic_sparc.s:113: unterminated character constant

    Looks like possibly a broken include file on Solaris, any ideas?

    • There might be a patch you need, because I know for a fact that several developers reported 2.0.35 testing out fine on their Solaris 8 boxes before we released it. I've forwarded your comment to dev@httpd.apache.org and will let you know if anybody comes back with an answer to this problem.

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