In this issue

The past week has seen more work toward getting Apache 2.0 running on the production server at www.apache.org. This culminated on Thursday evening as Ryan Bloom announced that the code had been up and running for three hours without any problems. The server appears to have been switched back to running Apache 1.3 at the time of writing, although it is not currently clear why.

Roy Fielding's new release procedure (see Apache Week issue 234), has been adopted and two releases of Apache 2.0 have been made for testing purposes, 2.0.10 and 2.0.11. The first suffered from problems on BeOS, although the second has not received any major bug reports yet.

Martin Kraemer has unearthed and fixed a security flaw in Apache 1.3 which was originally discovered and supposedly fixed earlier last year. The problem is found on some platforms where a GET request with a certain number of repeated '/' characters in the URI will give a directory index response rather than the correct page. The fix has been checked-in, and a 1.3.18 release has been tentatively scheduled for this weekend.

This week saw some old code removed from the Apache 2.0 repository: mod_proxy and the "dexter" MPM: mod_proxy now has its own CVS repository, and the dexter MPM was made obsolete by the "perchild" MPM. Code which made it into the CVS repository this week include an early prototype for SSL support in Apache 2.0 from Ben Laurie.

As we promised in Apache Week issue 210, here is our review of "mod_perl Pocket Reference" by Andrew Ford, who also maintains the mod_perl quick reference card.

In the tradition of the pocket reference series, this book measures 4.25 by 7 inches and consists of one main body that is divided into sections. In the introduction, which is the first of sixteen subtopics, it clearly states its objectives or rather what it is not meant to be. The book aspires to cover all of mod_perl 1.24's classes, methods and configuration directives but cautions that it is not a self-contained user guide. Its readers are assumed to be acquainted with mod_perl, web server technology and object-oriented Perl programming.

Currently some people use mod_perl simply to run existing Perl CGI scripts, but as can be seen from this extremely concise book, mod_perl offers much more than that. The book provides a good overall coverage of this versatile module, keeping all the necessary facts simple, short and precise without glossing over anything important.

I would highly recommend this book to mod_perl lovers as they may discover something that they may have missed while using the module. As for the experts, this book may be quite handy as a quick revision guide. It is also an excellent source of information for users who have been using mod_perl for only a short while. It will definitely save them the trouble of reading through a thick manual to flesh out mod_perl's potential. But then of course one must have a complete mod_perl "bible" nearby to refer to, for detailed installation, configuration and programming instructions.

Users who have never encountered Apache, Perl and mod_perl before are well advised to read the online mod_perl documentation and have some hands-on experience before giving this reference book a go. Otherwise they may find themselves wandering off and giving mod_perl a miss, as this is not a beginner's guide.

Read our full review

Next week we will be running a competition with four copies of the mod_perl reference book as prizes, make sure you are subscribed to Apache Week so you don't miss out.