From: JONESD@er6.eng.ohio-state.edu
Sent: Wednesday, July 21, 1999 6:26 PM
To: Info-VAX@Mvb.Saic.Com
Subject: Re: Apache for VMS - Release Date

In message <379577AF.F7625223@tmisnet.com>, Koloth <koloth@tmisnet.com> writes:
>I just installed the beta.  It took less than an hour to get the server up.
>The instructions are a little coarse but good enough.  Allowed me to
>serve the OpenVMS Doc set to everyone with a PC and a Browser.
>

If you are interested in actually working with the code rather than
just installing  pre-made executables, I've put a set of patches at:

    http://www.er6.eng.ohio-state.edu/~jonesd/apache/

These patches apply to the original Apache 1.3.6 sources, so they rollup
the changes made by Compaq's people (as of their '-4' beta) and my own fixes.
The file aaareadme.update inside vmsonly.zip summarizes my changes, a couple
of the items I addresses were independantly addressed by the current '-5' beta
but many weren't.  Altogether, 15 of Apache's source files need patched and
a couple dozen new source files were added.

Notable enhancements:
   - The apache scoreboard is mapped to a group global section so all of
     Apache's dynamic process management machinery functions.  If you
     enable the /server-status location in the config file then you can see
     the status of the child (the -5 beta always shows the slot for the
     current child as the only one having been allocated).  The -5 beta
     seems to have overlooked the scoreboard (maybe it works under 7.2), so
     it never starts more that the original number of child processes.

   - Keepalives now work! There were actually several separate causes for
     keep-alive failure that had to be tracked down - ranging from
     signal-handling incompatibilities to a real bug in the Apaches sources.

   - Preliminary script support which attempts to cache the spawned
     script process and re-use it.  The downside is that since every
     child process is likely to run a script at some point, the total
     number of process in the tree is doubled.  The large mailboxes used
     for inter-process comm. draws down the job's available bytlm very quickly.

   - I constructed a descrip.mms file for building the images so applying
     changes could be more efficient.  It assumes your current sys$disk
     is a rooted logical where the source tree is at [src...], [htdocs...],
     [conf...], etc.

Notable caveats:
   - This is all developmental mode stuff which I run interactively from
     a DECterm window when I want to play with it, I don't have any
     startup file or other provisions for detached operation.



David L. Jones               |      Phone:    (614) 292-6929
Ohio State University        |      Internet:
140 W. 19th St. Rm. 231a     |               jonesd@er6s1.eng.ohio-state.edu
Columbus, OH 43210           |               vman+@osu.edu

Disclaimer: Dogs can't tell it's not bacon.