In this issue

Apache Site: www.apache.org
Release: 1.3.4 (Released 11^th January 1999) (local download sites)
Beta: None

Apache 1.3.4 is the current stable release. Users of Apache 1.3.3 and earlier should look at upgrading to this version. Read Guide to 1.3.4 for information about changes between 1.3.3 and 1.3.4 and between 1.2 and 1.3.4.

These bugs have been found in 1.3.4 and will be fixed in the next release.

• It is recommended to use a single configuration file (typically conf/httpd.conf) but mod_info will log a warning message if it cannot read conf/access.conf or conf/srm.conf. PR#3656.
• With some browsers, Apache may not send a full response even though the file was updated on disk. This affects browsers which use HTTP/1.1 "etags" to ask servers for later versions of a file. Browsers known to do this are MSIE 4.1 and 5.0beta (older browsers used the modification time of the file). The problem is that Apache did not correctly compare the "etag" in the request with the "etag" of the file on disk (which will be different if the file has been updated). PR#3657.
• When using ./configure with the --with-layout=GNU the directory layout may be different from the default layout in Apache 1.3.3. This only occurs if the "prefix" includes a directory component named "apache", and results in directories containing unnecessary "httpd" components. This was an effect of a new feature in Apache 1.3.4 which allowed for the executable name of Apache to be changed from "apache". PR#3666.
• Compiler options starting with + cannot be used in EXTRA_CFLAGS in src/configuration. Most compilers use - for compiler options, but HP-UX's C compiler also uses +. PR#3681.
• The INSTALL file shows examples of commands to start and stop the server using apachectl. However it assumes that this script is in the sbin directory, but the default is now bin. PR#3727.

Patches for bugs in Apache 1.3.4 will be made available in the apply_to_1.3.4 subdirectory of the patches directory on the Apache site. Some new features and other unofficial patches are available in the 1.3 patches directory. For details of all previously reported bugs, see the Apache bug database and known bugs pages. Many common configuration questions are answered in the Apache FAQ.

Whenever the server is restarted with a USR1 signal, the "generation number" of the parent process is increased. This number is used by children to decide whether they should exit rather than wait for another incoming connection. In the next release, the output from the status module will show the generation number of the parent process and each child process.