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.

Because of the major differences between Windows and Unix, these are separated into bugs which affect Windows systems only, and other bugs (which may affect Windows as well). Unix users can ignore the bugs listed in the Windows section.

Windows-specific Bugs

• If the ErrorLog directive is removed from the httpd.conf file, Apache will use the built-in default filename for the error log file. This should match the name given on the ErrorLog directive in the distributed httpd.conf file, which was error.log. However it would actually revert to the "Unix" name of error_log. From the next release it will default to error.log.

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.

On NT, Apache can install itself as a "service". This is the recommended way for Apache to work on NT (Windows 95 does not have services, so Apache has to run from a console window instead). Apache is installed as a service with the -i command line option. If an error occurs installing the service (perhaps because an older version of Apache is already installed), then the error message is logged to the error log. However many people run Apache with the -i option from a console window, and then do not see any indication that an error has occurred. From the next release, Apache will display the error message (if any) on the console output. This will also apply for the -u command line option, which uninstalls the Apache service. Finally, Apache will no longer display the "Running Apache..." start up message unless it is actually going to start serving requests.

In current releases of Apache, CGI programs can be either scripts or binary programs. If it is a script, Apache tries to find the interpreter to use by looking at the first line, which should consists of #! followed by the full path to the interpreter binary. For example, a Perl script might start

  #!c:/bin/perl/perl.exe

This #! convention is the standard way on Unix of selecting an interpreter for a script. On Windows, the official way of selecting a interpreter is to treat the final extension of the filename as magic, and lookup the extension in the registry to find an interpreter.

From the next release, Apache will be able to use this method as well. A new directive, Win32InterpreterSource, is used to tell Apache whether to look for a #! line, or whether to use the file extension and the registry. The default is to look for a #! line as in current releases.

A new site has been established for a selection of WebDAV related material, including the mod_dav modules for Apache. DAV (or WebDAV) is an extension to the standard web HTTP protocol to allow for site and document management across the web. This can include things such as publishing documents to a site or collaborative editing of documents.

The mod_dav module implements the basic WebDAV functionality in Apache. This module is now under an Apache-style license.

The site is at http://www.webdav.org/.