In this issue

The effort to produce a new Apache 1.3 release got off to a promising start this week as Tony Finch checked in his patch to improve byterange handling, after it received sufficient testing and review by the group. However, more problems have been encountered which have further delayed a new release. The first hurdle was to actually "tag" the source tree for 1.3.15, a trivial procedure under normal circumstances. It emerged that one of the files inside the CVS repository had become corrupted which was causing the CVS client to crash.

The Apache procedure is that if a new release does not make it to public distribution, it is abandoned, the version number is incremented, and the release procedure begins again. For this reason, 1.3.15 was abandoned because of the CVS problem: 1.3.16 was then released for testing, but also abandoned because of a problem with name-based virtual hosting found by Ken Coar. Tony Finch fixed that bug too, and at time of writing, Apache 1.3.17 is due to be released on Monday.

The good news for Apache 2 is that the "ap_r*" API performance problem (as discussed in last week's issue) is now resolved, with the patch from Greg Stein being checked in. More good news is that Ryan Bloom has been testing the Apache 2 code on the live server at www.apache.org, which has enabled the group to find and fix several bugs.

A change made to Apache 2 this week of interest to server administrators is that the ClearModuleList and AddModule directives have been removed. These directives were needed in Apache 1.3 to ensure correct module ordering: in Apache 2.0, modules define their own ordering as appropriate, so these directives are no longer needed.

In this section we highlight some of the articles on the web that are of interest to Apache users.

In part 2 of "Getting More Out Of Apache", the Developer Shed shows you how to implement basic user authentication and set up access control groups. It also talks about Apache logging capabilities and the powerful URL rewriting module.

Stas Bekman continues with other techniques on saving even more memory in "Improving mod_perl Driven Site's Performance"". It does pay to be frugal.

Introduction to WML, Apache, and PHP is a good starting point for developing PHP-enhanced WML applications on the Apache Web Server. Instructions are given on configuring Apache to accept and serve WML enabled decks. By the end of this, you will have your first 'simple' wireless page.

Apache Week will be at the LinuxWorld Conference and Expo in New York next week to cover everything at the show that is related to Apache. You'll be able to find the special issue of Apache Week being written live from the Red Hat stand.