In this issue

Apache Site: www.apache.org
Release: 1.3.6 (Released 25^th March 1999) (local download sites)
Beta: None

Apache 1.3.6 is the current stable release. Users of Apache 1.3.4 and earlier on Unix systems should upgrade to this version. Read the Guide to 1.3.6 for information about changes between 1.3.4 and 1.3.6 and between 1.2 and 1.3.6.

Most bugs listed below include a link to the entry in the Apache bug database where the problem is being tracked. These entries are called "PR"s (Problem Reports). Some bugs do not correspond to problem reports if they are found by developers.

These bugs have been found in 1.3.6 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

• apache -S does not exit after showing the virtual host settings.
• The restart command apache -k services all connections in the listen queue before restarting. On a busy server this can take a hours.
• An extra call to wait_for_multiple_objects has been removed, causing up to a 5% gain in performance.

Other Bugs

• Compilation fails on Redhat 6 and possibly other Linux distributions with the latest versions of glibc. This is due to the header file ndbm.h being in a non-standard directory. PR#4431, PR#4528

Patches for bugs in Apache 1.3.6 will be made available in the apply_to_1.3.6 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.

Currently when Apache starts or is restarted, it checks that the directory root for each virtual host exists. With a small number of virtual hosts the time taken to do this is minimal and it catches configuration mistakes. However, the delay can reach several minutes when thousands of virtual hosts are in use. A new directive has been added to the next release of Apache, DocumentRootCheck. If a site has a considerable number of virtual hosts, setting DocumentRootCheck Off will cause a significant speedup when starting or restarting Apache.

A patch has been submitted to extend the SetEnvIf directive. The extension allows the directive to test environment variables, therefore also allowing it to check the outcome of other SetEnvIf directives that have been executed earlier.

The June Netcraft Server Survery shows Apache losing over 1% of market share, taking it to 56% of the server market. However, this statistic by itself is misleading; the cause of the drop is a single ISP based in the UK who recently changed their server version string from "Apache" to "based on Apache". This change affected 90,000 of their sites causing a large impact on the survey.

Apache is still gaining share however; after combining Apache and Apache-based servers it rose to over 61% this month.

The Apache developer community and Sun Microsystems, Inc. announced the formation of the Jakarta Project this week. The aim of the project is to integrate Sun's JavaServer Pages (JSP) technologies and make them available as open source. Although the project is still in the early stages, release of the source code from Sun is expected shortly and will be under the Apache license.

Apache Week is a weekly publication, but over the last couple of months we've missed out the occasional issue. We've done this when there is little or no news as feedback from readers has shown that this is preferable to us sending out a tiny issue with no content. Over the next few months we expect to publish a new issue at least every two weeks. However we will still send out tiny issues if there are important announcements, security notifications, or new releases.