In this issue

A new release of Apache 2.0, version 2.0.36, is currently in testing and may be released publicly soon after the weekend. The changes in 2.0.36 include (along with those covered previously):

• the AcceptPathInfo directive has been fixed (BZ#8234)
• a fix for mod_ssl when using virtual host with long hostnames (BZ#8572)
• many fixes and improvements to the worker MPM
• fix for subrequest handling which resulted in invalid Content-Length headers being returned when using certain combinations of modules (BZ#7966)
• fixes for Windows (BZ#8014, BZ#8009)

An additional change included in 2.0.36 makes the ApacheBench (ab) utility use non-blocking connect() calls: previously, the whole program would be blocked whenever a new connection was established to the server being benchmarked. The tool can now exercise the target server more thoroughly than previous versions; resulting in a higher reported performance. This brought up the interesting point that when comparing the performance of different versions of Apache, a single version of ab must be use to produce comparable results.

Along with the new 2.0 release, there are calls for a new 1.3 release to be made soon (which would be 1.3.25), particularly to get fixes for the problems with mod_proxy, which were found in 1.3.24, made widely available.

The April 2002 server surveys are out from E-Soft and Netcraft. Apache is still holding on to its majority market share, with 52% (Netcraft survey), 66% (E-Soft survey), or 57% (E-Soft SSL survey).

ZDNet analyse the results and ask "How does IIS keep its market share?".

Some of the big moves are because Microsoft has been able to identify people who control very large numbers of sites, are not bound tightly to a particular technology, and persuade them to switch to Microsoft servers.

The E-Soft server version report shows little evidence of Apache 2.0 being deployed, although Netcraft find that some big sites such as News.com have already deployed it.

This week the ApacheCon organisers announced a change to the proposed 2002 conference. The conference will now be held in Las Vegas on 18-21 November 2002, to co-incide with COMDEX. Other changes include adding a full day of tutorials, separately chargeable, and the provision of a conference discussion list. The last ApacheCon was held in Santa Clara in April 2001, read our review.

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

"Five tips for configuring Apache" is a no-nonsense, straight to the point article about fine-tuning the performance of an Apache 1.3 or Apache 2.0 web server. It gives a brief overview on five methods used: configuring the AcceptMutex directive, using threading (for Apache 2.0 only), implementing a session cache (if mod_ssl is used), adjusting the value of the KeepAliveTimeout directive (if KeepAlive is set to on), and monitoring the web server's load by using mod_status. Readers are then referred to related URLs for further information.

Kevin Hemenway is back again with "Apache Web-Serving with Mac OS X, Part 6" which explores the modules that are included in the default Apache web server on Mac OS X version 10.1.4. He starts by going through the LoadModule and AddModule directives, and points out the location of the module object files before revisiting the previous articles in this series and describing how to configure each module. The modules covered are: mod_cgi, mod_include, mod_php, mod_alias, mod_dir, mod_autoindex, mod_access, and mod_auth.

Windows 2000 users may be interested to learn how to install and configure Apache 1.3.24, mod_ssl, PHP, MySQL, and phpMyAdmin or how to install Apache 2.0.35 on their platform. The former walks you through each step of the installation and configuration diligently whereas comparatively, the latter just skims through the steps but includes a few screen shots for your perusal.