In this issue

A consensus seems to have been reached on the commit policy to use for the new Apache 2.0 stable tree, which had previously divided opinions among the group, as covered last week. The new policy will be to submit all patches to the mailing list for review before committing them; if the changes receive positive feedback from three committers, or they receive no negative feedback within a period of days, they will then be committed.

There have been some reports that using IPv6 with Apache 2.0 on Linux with some particular Gigabit Ethernet network cards can result in response packets being sent with an incorrect TCP checksum; the connection appears to "hang" before the HTTP response is sent, as clients discard these packets. Investigation is still underway, but one theory is that since the TCP checksum is calculated on the card itself when the "zero-copy" sendfile() call is used in Apache 2.0, this could be a hardware bug.

The Apache Modelling Portal provides the results of the Apache Modelling Project in which research assistants and students of the Hasso Plattner Institute in Germany have studied, modeled, and documented the Apache HTTP Server using fundamental modeling concepts. The information gathered in this project is available online to be downloaded as a set of HTML pages or a single PDF file. It currently focuses on Apache 1.3 while a study on Apache 2 is still in progress.

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

Issue 85 of Linux Gazette talks about a simple Perl script that is used to manage faxes on a fax server over the web in "Viewing Faxes on the Web". It shows you how Apache 2.0 is compiled and configured before listing the complete source code of the Perl script.

"How to Build, Install, Secure & Optimize Apache 2.x" and "How to Build, Install, Secure & Optimize PHP" walk you through the steps of installing version 2.0.43 of the Apache web server and PHP 4.2.3 as a DSO module. The instructions were tested on OpenNA Linux and Red Hat Linux 7.3 but apply to other platforms as well.

In the September 2002 issue of Linux Magazine, the article entitled "Hackproofing Your Web Applications" teaches you how to start worrying and love security. It starts off by revealing a few exploits. Then it demonstrates the moves on how to protect yourself. Finally it leaves you with ten rules to secure by.

Last week we asked you where the last ApacheCon was held; the answer of course was Las Vegas. Congratulations then to lucky reader Jack Vamvas in the UK who wins a copy of the SAMS book "Teach Yourself Apache 2 in 24 hours".

If you didn't win this time why not read the Apache Week review of the book and look out for more book competitions and reviews coming soon.