In this issue

The public release of a new 2.0 tarball remains stalled, with fixes being committed for a segfault in mod_include discovered in 2.0.24, which followed the problem with mod_mime found last week. Fixes for these have been checked in, and the group is now trying to decide whether to release a slightly-fixed 2.0.24, or 2.0.25 including all the changes made in CVS since 2.0.24 was tagged.

In Apache Week issue 257 we reported on the debate between Craig Mundie of Microsoft and Michael Tiemann. At the panel discussion ASF founding member Brian Behlendorf gave an interesting discussion on the BSD-style license and why it was important to Apache:

"..while Apache, for example, is under a BSD-style license, it was very important while we were building the Apache community that we not only have other corporations use it and adopt it into their commercial products, but also that we communicate to those companies the need to reinvest back, the need to build Apache itself as a strong force as they build up the momentum behind it. And to us, even though the obligation isn't there to share their code back, the companies that are participating in the Apache Software Foundation ... understand the need to reinvest, to build it back up."

The full transcript of the panel discussion is now available online

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

In "Apache 2.0: The Internals of the New, Improved A PatCHy", Ibrahim F. Haddad gives an overview of Apache 2.0 and shares with us the results of his Apache 2.0.8 performance tests. In conclusion, he highly recommends that current Apache 1.3.x users upgrade to Apache 2.0 once the release version is available. Please refer to "Apache Portable Runtime Project" and multiprocessing modules (MPMs) if you require more information about these two subjects.

NewbieNetwork.net shows PHP newbies how to create next and previous links with PHP. This step-by-step tutorial comes with a working copy of the source code used in the example. Meanwhile on Zend, John Coggeshall starts off a new series on creating a PHP based shopping cart with a MySQL database backend. In part 1, he takes us through the fundamentals of a shopping cart and then talks briefly about the PHP script itself (which is for small to medium-sized web sites only) in part 2 but there is more to come in the following weeks.

"Apache CodeRed Countermeasures with PHP: codeRedKiller!" provides a solution on how to prevent Code Red requests from reaching your Apache Web server by using PHP and bash. Basically it uses a PHP script to record the source IP address of the request and then runs a shell script to set up a filter in your firewall to block any further requests from the same source. You could use a simple shell script to parse your Apache error log to obtain the source IP address instead of using PHP. This article also advises you to ensure that the source IP address is not spoofed. The drawback is that all other valid requests from the source IP address will be stopped from reaching your web server permanently until you remove the filter.

This occasional section contains short announcements of jobs that require significant Apache experience. To see more jobs or find out how to submit your vacancy visit the Apache Week Jobs section.

Apache trainer (Southampton UK) (21st August 2001)

Jump4 IT is looking for a freelancer who can teach the equivalent of the Learning Tree 541 course: Apache Web Server.

Tomcat Admin and Developers (Reading UK) (17th August 2001)

Various jobs exist at Workplace Systems Reading for both Apache/Tomcat administrators and Java servlet Developers. For administrators, WebSphere skills also a bonus. Developers must have proven expertise.