New features with this release, as extensions of the Apache functionality. Because the core code has changed so significantly, there are certain liberties that earlier versions of Apache (and the NCSA daemon) took that recent Apache versions are pickier about - please check the compatibility notes if you have any problems.
If you're upgrading from Apache 1.2, you may wish to read the upgrade notes.
Enhancements: Core | Performance | Configuration | Modules | API | Misc
Configuration have been replaced with "AddModule"
with a slightly different syntax. For module authors there are
some changes designed to make it easier for users to add their
module.
ProxyReceiveBufferSize directive gives
mod_proxy's outgoing connections larger network
buffers, for increased throughput.
writev (where
available) to issue multiple writes with a single system call.
They also avoid copying memory into buffers as much as
possible. The result is less CPU time spent on transferring
large files.
mmap, which
means bytes are only copied from the disk buffer to the
network buffer directly by the kernel. The program never
copies bytes around, which reduces CPU time. (Only where
available/tested.)
mod_log_config can
be compile-time configured to buffer writes.
strncpy() with
ap_cpystrn(), a routine which doesn't have to
zero-fill the entire result. This has dramatic effects on
mod_include speed.
See the new performance documentation for more information.
configure script and a corresponding top-level
Makefile.tmpl file. The goal is to provide a GNU
Autoconf-style frontend which is capable to both drive the old
src/Configure stuff in batch and additionally
installs the package with a GNU-conforming directory layout. Any
options from the old configuration scheme are available plus a lot
of new options for flexibly customizing Apache.README.configure and
INSTALL for more information.
apxs was created which provides off-source building,
installing and activating of those DSO-based modules. It
completely hides the platform-dependent DSO-build commands from
the user and provides an easy way to build modules outside the
Apache source tree. To achieve this APACI installs the Apache C
header files together with the apxs tool.
/usr/local/apache//usr/local/etc/httpd/ to
/usr/local/apache/. This change covers only the
default setting (and the documentation); it is of course possible
to override it using the -d
ServerRoot and -f httpd.conf switches when
starting apache.
NameVirtualHost
directive is used to list IP address:port pairs on which
HTTP/1.1-style virtual hosting occurs. This is vhosting based on
the Host: header from the client. Previously this
address was implicitly the same as the "main address" of the
machine, and this caused no end of problems for users, and was not
powerful enough. Please see the Apache Virtual Host documentation for
further details on configuration.
Include directive
Include
directive includes other config files immediately at that point in
parsing.
-S command line option
it will dump out information regarding how it parsed the
VirtualHost sections. This is useful for folks
trying to debug their virtual host configuration.
SetEnvIf and
SetEnvIfNoCase. These allow you to set
environment variables for server and CGI use based upon attributes
of the request.
mod_mime_magic has been
added. It uses "magic numbers" and other hints from a file's
contents to figure out what the contents are. It then uses this
information to set the file's media type, if it cannot be
determined by the file's extension.
UNIQUE_ID.
ProxyVia
directive allows switching "Via:" support off or on, or
suppressing outgoing "Via:" header lines altogether for privacy
reasons.
NoProxy and ProxyDomain
directives added to proxy, useful for intranets.
ProxyPassReverse directive. It lets Apache adjust the
URL in the Location header on HTTP redirect
responses.
mod_include string comparisonsmod_dir module has
been split in two, with mod_dir handling directory index
files, and mod_autoindex
creating directory listings. Thus allowing folks to remove the
indexing function from critical servers.
SuppressColumnSorting IndexOptions
keyword.
SuppressHTMLPreamble can be used if
your README.html file includes its own HTML header.
IndexOptions directive now allows
the use of incremental prefixes (+/- to add/remove the respective
keyword feature, as was already possible for the
Options directive) to its
keyword arguments. Multiple IndexOptions directives applying
to the same directory will now be merged.
IconHeight and
IconWidth
let you set height and width attributes to the
<IMG> tag in directory listings.
NameWidth keyword to the
IndexOptions
directive lets you set the number of columns for
"fancy"
directory listings. If set to an '*' asterisk, the name width
will be adjusted automatically.
Alias and Redirect
AliasMatch,
ScriptAliasMatch, and
RedirectMatch
directives allow for the use of regular expression matching.
Additionally, new
<DirectoryMatch>,
<LocationMatch>,
and
<FilesMatch>
sections provide a new syntax for regular expression sectioning.
AddModuleInfo
directive added to mod_info
TransferLog disables
logging
TransferLog directive is given then no log is
written. This supports co-existence with other logging modules.
LogFormat
directive has been enhanced to allow you to give nicknames to
specific logging formats. You can then use these nicknames in
other LogFormat and CustomLog directives, rather than having to
spell out the complete log format string each time.
RewriteMap
directive
RewriteMap directive of
mod_rewrite. They provide two new features: First, you now can
randomly choose a sub-value from a value which was looked-up in a
rewriting map (which is useful when choosing between backend
servers in a Reverse Proxy situation). Second, you now can
translate URL parts to fixed (upper or lower) case (which is
useful when doing mass virtual hosting by the help of
mod_rewrite).
For all those module writers and code hackers:
child_init
child_exit
child_init and
child_exit functions are passed a pool whose lifetime is
the same as the lifetime of the child (modulo completely fatal
events in which Apache has no hope of recovering). In contrast,
the module init function is passed a pool whose lifetime
ends when the parent exits or restarts.
child_terminate
register_other_child
http_main.h. This is used in the parent to register
a child for monitoring. The parent will report status to a supplied
callback function. This allows modules to create their own children
which are monitored along with the httpd children.
piped_log
http_log.h. This API provides the common code for
implementing piped logs. In particular it implements a reliable piped
log on architectures supporting it (i.e., Unix at the moment).
set_last_modified split into three
set_last_modified performed multiple
jobs including the setting of the Last-Modified header, the
ETag header, and processing conditional requests (such as
IMS). These functions have been split into three functions:
set_last_modified, set_etag, and
meets_conditions. The field mtime has been
added to request_rec to facilitate
meets_conditions.
ap_log_error
ap_log_error.
This is still a work in progress.
set_file_slot for config parsing
set_file_slot routine provides a standard routine that
prepends ServerRoot to non-absolute paths.
post_read_request module API
psocket, and popendir
psocket and pclosesocket functions allow
for race-condition free socket creation with resource tracking.
Similarly popendir and pclosedir protect
directory reading.
is_initial_req
kill_only_once
ap_spawn_child functions which prevents Apache
from aggressively trying to kill off the child.
alloc debugging code
ALLOC_DEBUG provides a rudimentary memory
debugger which can be used on live servers with low impact --
it sets all allocated and freed memory bytes to 0xa5. Defining
ALLOC_USE_MALLOC will cause the alloc code to use
malloc() and free() for each object. This
is far more expensive and should only be used for testing with tools
such as Electric Fence and Purify. See main/alloc.c
for more details.
ap_cpystrn
strncpy "lookalike", with slightly different
semantics is much faster than strncpy because it
doesn't have to zero-fill the entire buffer.
table_addn, table_setn,
table_mergen
pstrdup
on their arguments. This provides for big speedups. There is
also some debugging support to ensure code uses them properly.
See src/CHANGES for more information.
construct_url
server_rec * to taking a request_rec *.
get_server_name, get_server_port
ap_bspawn_child and
ap_call_exec
child_info * to spawn function
(as passed to ap_bspawn_child) and to
ap_call_exec to allow children to work correctly on Win32.
We also cleaned up the nomenclature a bit, replacing
spawn_child_err with simply
ap_spawn_child and spawn_child_err_buff
with simply ap_bspawn_child.
ap_add_version_component()
Server:
header line. Previous 1.3beta versions had used a
SERVER_SUBVERSION compile-time #define
to perform this function. Whether the tokens are actually displayed
is controlled by the new ServerTokens directive.
AccessFileName
Enhancement
AccessFileName directive can now take more than
one filename. This lets sites serving pages from network file
systems and more than one Apache web server, configure access
based on the server through which shared pages are being served.
HostNameLookups now defaults to "Off"
HostNameLookups
directive now defaults to "Off". This means that, unless explicitly
turned on, the server will not resolve IP addresses into names. This
was done to spare the Internet from unnecessary DNS traffic.
HostnameLookups
directive now supports double-reverse DNS. (Known as
PARANOID in the terminology of tcp_wrappers.) An IP
address passes a double-reverse DNS test if the forward map of the
reverse map includes the original IP. Regardless of the
HostnameLookups setting, mod_access access lists using DNS
names require all names to pass a double-reverse
DNS test. (Prior versions of Apache required a compile-time
switch to enable double-reverse DNS.)
timefmt string used by mod_include has been
modified to display the year using four digits rather than the
two-digit format used previously. The mod_autoindex
module has also been modified to display years using four digits
in FancyIndexed directory listings.
htdigest), and these other applications would fail to
build because the routines were built only into the server. These
routines are now being migrated to a separate subdirectory and
library so they can be used by other applications than just the
server. See the src/ap/ subdirectory.
ServerSignature directive
UseCanonicalName directive
UseCanonicalName
off Apache will use the hostname and port supplied by the
client, if available.
SERVER_VERSION definition abstracted, and server
build date added
#defined value for
SERVER_VERSION. In order to keep this value
consistent when modules and the core server are compiled at
different times, this information is now available through the
core API routine ap_get_server_version(). The use of
the SERVER_VERSION symbol is deprecated. Also,
ap_get_server_built() returns a string representing
the time the core server was linked.
ServerTokens, allows the Webmaster
to change the value of the Server response header
field which is sent back to clients. The ServerTokens
directive controls whether the server will include a non-specific
note in the server identity about the type of operating system on
which the server is running as well as included module information.
As of Apache 1.3, this additional information is included by default.
{SHA1} are taken
as Base64 encoded SHA1 passwords. More information and
some utilities to convert Netscape ldap/ldif entries can be
found in support/SHA1.