In this issue

Version 1.0.3 is the current public release. The next version will be 1.1, initially as a beta release (1.1b1).

Actually, it is not really a bug, just an unexpected 'feature'. A few users have found problems getting Apache to serve up their Shockwave movies. The problem only occurs if a server is using the "XBITHACK" directive option. When set, this directive tells Apache that all files that are executable (have their executable bits set) can contain server-side-includes -- even if the file contains Shockwave data! The problem is that the file, after parsing, is served up as type 'text/html', rather than it's original mime type. The fix to be included in 1.1 is to only parse files which start out as type text/html, and leave all other file types alone. In the meantime, the workaround is to remove the executable bits on files that are not served correctly.

This list gives features that have been added to the 1.1 developers version over the last week.

Statistics Module

Keeping track of Apache's performance is going to be easier in 1.1, with the new statistics module now under development. The current version shows state of the Apache server processes and CPU overheads, and there is a graphing program to display statistics over a period of time.

New Scripts

A bunch of new CGI scripts are going to be bundled with Apache 1.1. These currently include an animation script and a "random link" selector.

Updated Language Negotiation

The filename checking functions of Apache have been rewritten so that the order of filename extensions are irrelevant. So x.html.en.Z is the same as x.en.Z.html, a compressed, English HTML file.

In each issue we've listed the new features planned and being developed. Now here is a handy summary of everything that's probably going to be in 1.1, so far.

• New Imagemap module that can create menus for non-graphic browsers
• Persistant Conections ("Keep-Alive"s)
• Proxy and Caching module
• OS/2 Support
• New and improved CGI scripts
• New icons and "powered-by" logo
• CERN Metafile support
• New authentication modules (Berkeley DB, mSQL, anonymous logins)
• MD5 Authentication support
• Performance upgrade by using shared memory for the process scoreboard
• Updated Cookie module to work with other site cookies
• Hostname DNS lookups are configurable
• CGI variables are passed to Server-side-includes
• Improved UserDirectory mapping allowing searching multiple paths and redirection
• Caching of .htaccess files to improve performance
• Buffered input/output routines
• Fix XBITHACK problem with non HTML files
• API change to allow removal of internal MIME types

Apache on Windows NT

A Windows NT port of Apache has been written and is likely to be available freely, with source code, soon. The NT version contains the majority of Apache features found in version 1.0.3

Multithreading?

Multithreading may increase server performance on the machines that can support it. The Apache server is not currently multithreaded but some other Unix servers are. A combination of multithreading and the current "Server Pool" techniques would allow better use of multiprocessor machines as well as being more robust to programming or module errors. Not all machines can support threaded processes, but some that don't can use a software thread emulating package like pthreads. Others will need threading packages written for them or a non-threaded version of Apache.