In this issue

The long awaited release of Apache 1.2 is now scheduled for June 5th. A final beta version, 1.2b11, was released on 30th May. This gives a period of one week to find and fix any remaining bugs. Version 1.2b11 is called a "release candidate", which means that if no major problems are found it will be renamed as 1.2 and released as the final version on June 5th. Any minor bugs found now will either be fixed if they definitely do not cause any other problems, or fixes will be made available as patches to 1.2.

Version 1.2b11 has a number of bug fixes, mostly minor, compared to 1.2b10. It also fixes some problems with the declaration and use of virtual hosts, both name-based and IP-based. Any CGI scripts which failed to work with with previous betas of 1.2 should work again, since Apache now works the same as 1.1.3 when it invokes CGI programs (this only affects programs located in a ScriptAlias'ed directory where the alias includes some extra path information).

The extensive testing that the 1.2 betas have received has lead to many improvements in the overall reliability and performance of Apache, in addition to the numerous new features over the old 1.1.3 release. Once 1.2 is released, sites running 1.1.3 or earlier should upgrade to 1.2. No more work or bug fixes will be done on versions before 1.2.

The beta releases have been in source-code format only, and anyone running a beta version of 1.2 should upgrade to the full release when it is available. The full release should also be available in pre-compiled (binary) form for several major operating systems.

Release: 1.1.3 (Released 14th January 1997)
Beta: 1.2b11 (Released 30th May 1997)

Bugs fixed in 1.2b11:

• When using keepalives and name-based virtual hosts, requests on a keptalive connection can get a response from the wrong virtual host.
• If a client opens a connection to Apache, but does not send anything before the server times out the connection, Apache would log a request for "-" with a 200 status in the access_log. Now fixed to log a 408 (Request Time Out) instead.
• Recent changes (in 1.2b10) prevented the "Location" header being sent on some redirect responses. Could also case a core dump when logging the request in some instances.
• OS/2 signal handling was broken in an earlier beta.
• Proxy cache was not closing a file, leading to "too many open files" errors on some systems.
• On Irix, Apache child processes could get stuck if IdentityCheck was enabled.

Patches to any Apache 1.2b11 bugs may be available in the 1.2b11 patches directory on the Apache site. At time of writing there are no patches and this directory does not exist.

For details of all previously reported bugs, see the Apache bug database. Many common configuration questions are answered in the Apache FAQ.

Apache is currently in a 'beta release' cycle. This is where it is made available prior to full release for testing by anyone interested. Normally during the beta cycle no new major features will be added. The full release of Apache 1.2 based on 1.2b11 is expected on June 5th.

A small change has been made to support calling perl functions direct from SSI when Apache is compiled with mod_perl support. This change has no effect unless mod_perl is added to the server.

The Apache homepage (www.apache.org) has been updated. The main menu of Apache items is now located at the top of the page, and the long list of mirror sites has been moved to a separate page. The www.apache.org server is located in California, so people downloading from outside the US should use a local mirror. There are over 50 mirror sites, with some countries such as Spain, Russia and Japan and having several mirrors. There are also three mirror sites in the US itself.