In this issue

Apache 2.0.36 was released on 8^th May 2002 and is now the latest version of the Apache server. This is the second stable release of Apache 2.0, following up on 2.0.35 which was released on 6^th April 2002. Read our special feature for more information about the history of Apache 2.0.

Apache 2.0.36 is available in source form for compiling on Unix or Windows, for download from the main Apache site or from any mirror download site.

This is mainly a bug fix release, with a few new features. Users should upgrade if they will be affected by the particular bugs mentioned below, or would like to use any of the new features.

The new features in this release (added since 2.0.35) are:

• Two new experimental thread-based MPMs "leader/follower" and "threadpool" are included, which aim to address performance limitations in the worker MPM
• Hooks have been added to mod_dav allowing a repository provider module to implement the DASL (WebDAV search) specification
• The new MIME types image/vnd.djvu and application/xhtml+xml are included in the default configuration. (BZ#7795, BZ#7969)

The bugs fixed in this release include:

• Many performance and reliability fixes in the worker MPM
• Several improvements to mod_ssl, including a fix to allow using mod_proxy as a reverse SSL to HTTP proxy (BZ#8174), a fix for an infinite loop which could be by using Netscape Navigator (BZ#8389), a fix for using virtual hosts with long hostnames (BZ#8572), and synchronisation with the changes in mod_ssl 2.8.8
• The AcceptPathInfo directive has been fixed; previously the logic of the directive was inverted (BZ#8234)
• A fix for sub-request handling which resulted in invalid Content-Length headers being returned when using certain combinations of modules (BZ#7966)
• A fix for segfaults seen when generating "invalid byte-range" responses (status code 416)
• mod_proxy fixes: improved error handling (BZ#8407), fixes for use of persistent connections (PR#10010) and operation on EBCDIC platforms
• Fixes to HTTP compliance problems: the server will now read trailing headers of chunked input bodies, and does allow an empty Host: header (BZ#7441)
• Many small build and configure fixes (BZ#7840, BZ#7818, BZ#7802, BZ#7841)
• Many documentation updates (BZ#8037, BZ#7832, BZ#8144, BZ#8643)

• A fix for a performance problem under high load in the Windows NT MPM.
• A fix for a possible deadlock in the Netware MPM
• A plethora of portability fixes: including for AIX (BZ#7957, BZ#8707), Solaris (BZ#7876, BZ#8214), Mac OS X (BZ#7970), and Windows (BZ#7910, BZ#8014, BZ#8009)

The mod_deflate module included in Apache 2.0 was moved out of the "experimental" modules directory this week, indicating it is ready for production use. It was noted that some manual configuration is needed by those wishing to use this module, to set up BrowserMatch directives disabling deflate support for certain browsers which have buggy Content-Encoding support (for instance 4.x versions of MSIE).

A patch was submitted to the list this week which would make each MPM module include an identifying string in the Server response header, along with the version of Apache and any major modules. Several group members were unhappy with revealing this configuration detail; a proposal was even made to restrict the information revealed in the Server header to just the Apache version using the ServerTokens minimal directive.

Now that the date for ApacheCon US 2002, Las Vegas, Nevada, has been settled on 18-21 November 2002, the ASF members are starting to design its technical program which will include over 40 sessions. The good news is - you are still in time to sign up to present a session which can range from 30 minutes to 2 hours. Session proposals can cover any educational issues related to projects of the Apache Software Foundation or the Web in general excluding commercial sales or marketing presentation. Topics sought include:

• Apache Web server topics (installation, compilation, configuration, migration, Version 2.0)
• All Apache Software Foundation projects (Jakarta, mod_perl, Xerces, etc.)
• scripting languages and dynamic content (Java, PHP, Perl, TCL, Python, XML, XSL, etc.)
• Security and eCommerce
• Performance tuning, load balancing, high availability
• tips for writing Apache Web server modules
• Technical and non-technical case studies
• new Web-related technologies

If you would like to be a speaker at the ApacheCon 2002 event, please go to the ApacheCon site, log in, and choose the "Submit a CFP" option from the list provided before Friday 31 May 2002 17:30 EDT. Should you be interested in giving a vendor presentation, please send an email to info@ApacheCon.Com instead.

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

The Solaris Developer Connection site provides this tutorial which guides you through each step of installing Apache 1.3.24, mod_ssl 2.8.8, and OpenSSL 0.9.6c on a Solaris platform. It explains how to compile and configure Apache with Dynamic Shared Object (DSO) support, and load mod_ssl as a DSO module. It also provides instructions for generating a sample custom server certificate.

Apache developer William Rowe, Jr answers the question of, "What's New and Improved in Apache 2.0 on Windows?" by examining three major areas in Apache 2.0 that affect the Windows platform. The first is the Multi-Processing Module that is optimised for Windows NT (mpm_winnt), followed by the Apache Portable Runtime (APR) library, and lastly he looks at the most important Windows-NT-specific change which is the addition of Unicode support.

In "PHP and PostgreSQL", Vikram Vaswani walks us through six examples which demonstrate how to use PHP's built-in PostgreSQL functions to manipulate data in the database. He shows us how to use a few different methods to extract data, apply PostgreSQL support for transactions, and debug some PHP scripts using the error-handling functions.