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Posted to cvs@httpd.apache.org by mj...@apache.org on 2001/10/03 19:46:57 UTC
cvs commit: apache-1.3 Announcement
mjc 01/10/03 10:46:57
Modified: . Announcement
Log:
Add a guide to Apache 1.3.21 changes, taken from the commit logs so not
to miss things in CHANGES and sorted into categories, with minor changes
lumped together and some explanations changed to be more readable.
Submitted by: Mark Cox
Reviewed by: Several Red Hat Apache Week team members
Revision Changes Path
1.71 +172 -113 apache-1.3/Announcement
Index: Announcement
===================================================================
RCS file: /home/cvs/apache-1.3/Announcement,v
retrieving revision 1.70
retrieving revision 1.71
diff -u -r1.70 -r1.71
--- Announcement 2001/05/21 18:04:02 1.70
+++ Announcement 2001/10/03 17:46:57 1.71
@@ -1,131 +1,190 @@
- Apache 1.3.20 Released
-
- The Apache Software Foundation and The Apache Server Project are
- pleased to announce the release of version 1.3.20 of the Apache HTTP
+ Apache 1.3.21 Released
+
+ The Apache Software Foundation and The Apache Server Project are
+ pleased to announce the release of version 1.3.21 of the Apache HTTP
server.
-
- This version of Apache is principally a security fix release which
- closes a problem under the Windows and OS2 ports that would segfault
- the server in response to a carefully constructed URL. It also fixes
- some potential configuration quirks present in the 1.3.19 release.
- A summary of the new features is given at the end of this document.
-
- We consider Apache 1.3.20 to be the best version of Apache available
- and we strongly recommend that users of older versions, especially of
- the 1.1.x and 1.2.x family, upgrade as soon as possible. No further
+
+ This version of Apache is principally a security fix release which
+ closes some problems where a directory listing could be obtained
+ instead of the default index page. A summary of the bug fixs and major
+ new features is given at the end of this document.
+
+ We consider Apache 1.3.21 to be the best version of Apache available
+ and we strongly recommend that users of older versions, especially of
+ the 1.1.x and 1.2.x family, upgrade as soon as possible. No further
releases will be made in the 1.2.x family.
-
- Apache 1.3.20 is available for download from
+
+ Apache 1.3.21 is available for download from
- http://httpd.apache.org/dist/httpd/
-
- Please see the CHANGES_1.3 file in the same directory for a full list
+ http://httpd.apache.org/dist/httpd/
+
+ Please see the CHANGES_1.3 file in the same directory for a full list
of changes.
-
+
Binary distributions are available from
-
- http://httpd.apache.org/dist/httpd/binaries/
-
- The source and binary distributions are also available via any of the
+
+ http://httpd.apache.org/dist/httpd/binaries/
+
+ The source and binary distributions are also available via any of the
mirrors listed at
-
- http://www.apache.org/mirrors/
-
- Apache 1.3.20 for Win32 and OS2 corrects a serious denial of service
- vulnerability, and users are strongly discouraged from using any
- previous versions on those platforms.
-
- As of Apache 1.3.17, Win32 binary distributions are now based on the
- Microsoft Installer (.MSI) technology. This change occured in order
- to resolve the many problems WinME and Win2K users experienced with
- the older InstallShield-based installer .exe file. While development
- continues to make this new installation method more robust, questions
+
+ http://www.apache.org/mirrors/
+
+ As of Apache 1.3.17, Win32 binary distributions are now based on the
+ Microsoft Installer (.MSI) technology. This change occured in order to
+ resolve the many problems WinME and Win2K users experienced with the
+ older InstallShield-based installer.exe file. While development
+ continues to make this new installation method more robust, questions
should be directed at the news:comp.infosystems.www.servers.ms-windows
- newsgroup.
+ newsgroup.
- As of Apache 1.3.12 binary distributions contain all standard Apache
- modules as shared objects (if supported by the platform) and include
- full source code. Installation is easily done by executing the
- included install script. See the README.bindist and INSTALL.bindist
- files for a complete explanation. Please note that the binary
- distributions are only provided for your convenience and current
+ As of Apache 1.3.12 binary distributions contain all standard Apache
+ modules as shared objects (if supported by the platform) and include
+ full source code. Installation is easily done by executing the
+ included install script. See the README.bindist and INSTALL.bindist
+ files for a complete explanation. Please note that the binary
+ distributions are only provided for your convenience and current
distributions for specific platforms are not always available.
-
+
For an overview of new features introduced after 1.2 please see
-
- http://httpd.apache.org/docs/new_features_1_3.html
-
- In general, Apache 1.3 offers several substantial improvements over
- version 1.2, including better performance, reliability and a wider
- range of supported platforms, including Windows 95/98 and NT (which
- fall under the "Win32" label), OS2, Netware, and TPE threaded platforms.
+ http://httpd.apache.org/docs/new_features_1_3.html
+
+ In general, Apache 1.3 offers several substantial improvements over
+ version 1.2, including better performance, reliability and a wider
+ range of supported platforms, including Windows 95/98 and NT (which
+ fall under the "Win32" label), OS2, Netware, and TPE threaded
+ platforms.
+
Apache is the most popular web server in the known universe; over half
- of the servers on the Internet are running Apache or one of its
+ of the servers on the Internet are running Apache or one of its
variants.
-
- IMPORTANT NOTE FOR WIN32 USERS: Over the years, many users have come
- to trust Apache as a secure and stable server. It must be realized
+
+ IMPORTANT NOTE FOR WIN32 USERS: Over the years, many users have come
+ to trust Apache as a secure and stable server. It must be realized
that the current Win32 code has not yet reached the levels of the Unix
- version, but is of acceptable quality. Win32 stability or security
+ version, but is of acceptable quality. Win32 stability or security
problems do not reflect on the Unix version.
-
- Apache 1.3.20 Major changes
+
+ Apache 1.3.21 Major changes
- The primary security fix is:
- * A carefully constructed URI could cause the server to segfault on
- Win32 and OS2, denying access to users until the error was cleared.
- This is resolved on both platforms, no server data vulnerability
- was identified for this denial of service exploit.
-
- The general bug fixes:
- * Eliminate a potential segfault if an invalid floating point value
- is passed to the ap_snprintf() function, on platforms supporting
- isnan() and isinf().
- * Fix a possible segfault at startup in the detection of a default
- ServerName or IP string when no ServerName was specified.
- * Fixed mod_proxy to retain empty headers, as allowed by RFC2068.
- * Properly resolve the location of ndbm on Linux and some glibc2
- builds, where ndbm.h is in the nonstandard db1/ subdir.
-
- Win32 bug fixes:
- * Win32 now properly handles the SSI exec cmd tag. Due to argument
- parsing issues with spaces and slashes, cmd is interpreted as an
- executable file, not a long command line string.
- * Resolved a threading problem with WinNT/2K services, allowing
- modules such as mod_jserv and mod_perl to shut down cleanly.
- * Resolved stdin and stdout pipes for the parent Win32 service
- process, solving bugs such as "dup2(stdin) failed" when trying
- to use piped logs.
-
- Netware specific bug fixes:
- * Netware initial screen allows the -s parameter to switch to the
- system console screen, warning messages during startup are now
- displayed.
- * Netware added '.' and '..' to the directory listing so mod_autoindex
- will now display the parent directory.
- * NetWare now shuts down cleanly in error conditions, such as a failure
- while reading the httpd.conf file.
-
- The main new features include:
- * Enhanced rotatelogs to allow a UTC offset to be specified, and
- the format logfile names with human-readable date/time stamps.
- * Added the NOESCAPE (NS) flag to RewriteRule, to disable *all*
- normal URI escaping. Note incautious use can give unexpected
- results or introduce security risks.
- * Added the '\' character to RewriteRule to allow escaping of
- special characters. Allows embedding of both the '$' and '%'
- characters in the results, so 'foo\$1' translates to 'foo$1'
- rather than 'foo\<value of $1>'.
- * Added the -V flag to suexec, to display the compile-time settings
- with which it was built. (Only valid for root or the HTTPD_USER
- username.)
- * Introduced EBCDIC conversion configuration options, controlling the
- conversion based on MIME type or file suffix.
- * Support for the Cygwin 1.x platform (a POSIX emulation layer for
- Win32 systems, see http://www.cygwin.com). Note this is an entirely
- different implementation than the native calls in the win32 port.
- * Support for building modules with apxs under Win32. cygwin builders
- must use a cygwin build of perl to avoid MSVC handling.
+ Security vulnerabilities
+ * A vulnerability was found in the Win32 port of Apache 1.3.20. A
+ client submitting a very long URI could cause a directory listing
+ to be returned rather than the default index page. A 403 Forbidden
+ will now be returned
+ * A vulnerability was found in the split-logfile support program. A
+ request with a specially crafted Host: header could allow any file
+ with a .log extension on the system to be written to. PR#7848
+ * A vulnerability was found when Multiviews are used to negotiate
+ the directory index. In some configurations, requesting a URI with
+ a QUERY_STRING of M=D could return a directory listing rather than
+ the expected index page.
+
+ New features
+
+ The main new features in 1.3.21 (compared to 1.3.20) are:
+ * The user manual has been updated. As well as a number of small
+ fixes these updates include new translations into French and
+ Japanese, a guide to using Apache httpd on Cygwin, a lexicon of
+ Apache error messages, updated TPF documentation, and a
+ comprehensive guide to using log files
+ * The user manual has been moved out of the htdocs DocumentRoot and
+ is now handled by an Alias directive in a similar way to the icons
+ directory
+ * The supplied icons are now also distributed in PNG format
+ * A significant overhaul to the the Apache Bench program, ab has
+ taken place, as first reported in April. The new Apache Bench
+ includes fixes, additional statistics, csv and gnuplot output, and
+ SSL support
+ * New directives have been added to the mod_usertrack module, The
+ first, CookieDomain, can be used to customise the Domain
+ attribute. The patch to add the CookieDomain directive was first
+ submitted over two years ago. Historically mod_usertrack has used
+ the obsolete Netscape cookie syntax. The new CookieStyle directive
+ allows use of the RFC2109 or RFC2965 syntax instead. PR#5023,
+ PR#5920, PR#6140.
+ * The server will now display a warning if line-end comments (#) are
+ found in the configuration file. Not all directives are able to
+ handle comments on the same line
+ * A new directive, AcceptMutex, allows run-time configuration of the
+ mutex type used for accept serialization, currently a compile-time
+ only setting in 1.3. Since different types of mutex have different
+ performance characteristics on different platforms, this directive
+ will allow administrators to tune their Apache server more easily.
+ The current list of possible methods is: uslock, pthread, sysvsem,
+ fcntl, flock, os2sem, tpfcore, none. Not all platforms support all
+ methods
+ * mod_auth has been enhanced to allow access to a document to be
+ controlled based on the owner of the file being served. Require
+ file-owner will only allow files to be served where the
+ authenticated username matches the user that owns the document.
+ Require file-group works in a similar way checking that the group
+ matches
+
+ New features that relate to specific platforms:
+ * On Win32 and NetWare the mod_unique_id and mod_vhost_alias modules
+ are now included
+ * On Win32 the code to allow the server to run under Cygwin has had
+ a number of fixes and updates. Cygwin support was first added to
+ version 1.3.20
+ * A new directive, AcceptFilter, has been added to control BSD
+ accept filters at run-time. This should make it easier to move
+ server binaries across different BSD machines without requiring
+ recompilation. Support for accept filters was first added to
+ version 1.3.14, the functionality can postpone the requirement for
+ a child process to handle a new connection until an HTTP request
+ has arrived, therefore increasing the number of connections that a
+ given number of child processes can handle
+ * The server will now take advantage of recent improvements to the
+ TPF operating system which include an enhanced system fork and
+ exec, updates to allow non-blocking file descriptors, and an
+ update to shutdown processing
+
+ Bugs fixed
+
+ The following bugs were found in Apache 1.3.20 and have been fixed in
+ Apache 1.3.21:
+ * Under certain circumstances a child may crash due to a bug in
+ mod_include. If a server uses an ErrorDocument for 404 (request
+ not found) errors which points to a server-parsed HTML file which
+ uses a <!--#include virtual="file" --> section, then a request
+ containing %2f will result in a segfault. The segfault is harmless
+ and does not cause a security problem, but is being triggered by
+ the recent IIS worm
+ * The Multiviews functionality has been fixed to prevent
+ mod_negotiation from serving any multiview variant that contains
+ unknown filename extensions. PR#8130
+ * UnsetEnv now works from the main body of a configuration file.
+ PR#8254
+ * When used as a reverse proxy any headers set by other modules
+ (such as mod_usertrack or mod_securid) now get passed on to the
+ back-end server. PR#6055
+ * Server response headers can now be logged via the proxy. PR#7461
+ * mod_proxy will now pay attention to HTTP headers that specify the
+ request is not to be cached. PR#5668
+ * When a client making a request via mod_proxy died unexpectedly,
+ mod_proxy did not close its connection. PR#8090
+ * The CacheForceCompletion directive has been fixed PR#7383,
+ PR#8067, PR#6585
+ * A memory leak has been fixed in the mod_mime_magic module
+ * A Satisfy All option has been added to the default container
+ designed to stop access to .htaccess files. Without this
+ directive, these files could still be fetched if they were within
+ the scope of a Satisfy Any directive.
+
+ The following bugs relate to specific platforms:
+ * A number of fixes for NetWare have been added. These include:
+ enabling long file names in htpasswd and htdigest, protection
+ against ill behaved modules, better handling of abnormal
+ shutdowns, dealing with the limited stack space during server side
+ includes, and recognising special filenames such as proxy:http://
+ correctly
+ * A shutdown hang could occur on Solaris when using lots of piped
+ TransferLogs and at least one piped ErrorLog
+ * On EBCDIC platforms a bug in the proxy module stopped SSL proxying
+ working
+ * On Win32, mod_unique_id did not guarantee a unique ID due to
+ threading