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Posted to gui-dev@apache.org by Randy Terbush <ra...@zyzzyva.com> on 1997/08/18 16:38:04 UTC
Future of configuration
Since Dean just raised the question in gui-dev about "what are
ya'll up to" I thought I would post back to this list a brief
synopsis of what the 2 or 3 active persons are working on since it
is somewhat relevant to discussions about config file syntax.
Justin Seiferth and Roman Baron have been working on a Java based
configuration frontend that Justin originally showed us some time
back. http://butler.disa.mil/ApacheConfig/
My main feedback to what is going on in this list has been an
attempt to find a common ground protocol that we can give to any
interface developer which would allow any number of text based,
Java, Tcl, etc. interfaces and should provide us some portability
to other platforms like Win32.
SNMP seems to me to be the logical choice here as there has been an
HTTP MIB under development that I think Harrie Hazewinkel has been
involved with. I've not had success reaching Harrie to get his
feedback on SNMP issues. Perhaps Dirk knows what's up with Harrie?
As for how this relates to current discussion about added
directives and other configuration languages, I _personally_ think
that abstracting the configuration language out of the core would
be a good thing. Adding SNMP to manipulate the servers
configuration data directly would offer a rather standard API that
could even be portable to other web servers given that they could
adopt the same public standard. Feedback from Harrie on this issue
would be very helpful.
Given a config API to work with, I personally relish the idea of a
telnet accessed config using similar syntax to that of a cisco
router.
On disk storage formats could then be optioned to:
* SQL database
* DB format
* current text format
* Win32 Registry format (god help us)
* etc.
Obviously all 2.0 issues.
In a nutshell. Comments solicited.
-Randy
Re: Future of configuration
Posted by Roman Baron <al...@ibm.net>.
The commincation protocol between the clein/server config. is now the
slowing issue.
I cannot make a clear choise partly because I'm not really familiar
with SNMP, and partly bacause me bahing not familiar with Apache server.
Though, I leave that choise to u guys, I'l try here to show a bit what
I intended to do at first.
Mainly all of the directives are named, and grouped, very similar to
.INI windows files.
Each may have many parameters, but this is the basicc syntax.
We've decided (Am I right?) that the Applet should be the one who
points the server to the exact directives, to increase flexibility.
Thus, the applet must be able to send a CHANGE ( or SET for da matter )
request to the server, passinng the Name, Group,
and paramters of the directive. For example:
/SET GroupName DirName parameter string\n
/GET GroupName DirName parameter string\n
/ERR Code Description
we can also add:
/ADD GroupName DirName parameter string\n
/MOV GroupName DirName parameter string\n
Add will be able to add the parameter to the curreent paramter list, MOv
remove it accordingly.
Add/Mov commands could also be used for adding directives, for
"plug-ins", etc.
Those are the basic, thou search and other cap. can be added later,
this text based protocol will be used to transport messages.
It's close to ur offer Justin, and I believe it's less troubble for
us to create a parser for this than learning and convering to SNMP. But
as I said, the choise is yours :)
Regards, Baron Roman alphax1@ibm.net
Re: Future of configuration
Posted by Maj Justin Seiferth <se...@www.disa.mil>.
Instead of bolting SNMP "into" Apache, we had discussed writing a small
but separate "configuration" server which might in future have some real
time relationship with the web server but would initally just read/write
the configuration files. It would reconfigure Apache by restarting it
once the configuration changes had been completed. So, SNMP could
potentially be used to send/receive configuration information to this
configuration server and perhaps once Apache becomes threaded the
configuration stuff could either be melded into the main web server or
the configuration server could be expanded to allow real-time
communications. For the time being though- one step at a time :)
BTW, any and all expertise/advice in SNMP / MIBs is appreciated. We're
considering using the Adventnet Java toolkit as advertised on
www.cupojoe.com.
Justin "man of a thousand e-mail addresses" Seiferth
seiferth@erols.com
Re: Future of configuration
Posted by Dean Gaudet <dg...@arctic.org>.
A month or so ago Doug and I were talking about the functions he needed
from the core to implement the perl config funkiness. I think we agreed
that if we could change the configuration code to read from a callback
instead of just from a file that he could do everything he needed. This
is actually very easy to implement (even as a stop-gap before SFIO in 2.0)
because all configuration code passes around a pseudo-global cmd_parms.
It would be trivial to add another two fields to that to put in a callback
with arbitrary void *data pointer. Then only one or two places need to
know about the callback.
This is a desirable change for mod_perl because it would mean mod_perl
needs access to fewer of the core functions. It could be used to
implement some other config mechanisms ... but I doubt it could be used to
do SNMP. SNMP mgmt seems like a hard thing to integrate into apache.
With the way config works in present day apache it is possible to do it
only at start/restart time. snmp and telnet interfaces would seem really
hard to retrofit... I'm assuming you want to do something while it's live
and running. And some of the optimizations I mumble about (and have
implemented already) involve doing pre-calculations at config time to save
time in the critical path. It'd suck to have to redo these calculations
(and respawn all the children) with every line entered in a telnet window
:) Or maybe I'm confused by what you want.
Dean
On Mon, 18 Aug 1997, Randy Terbush wrote:
> Since Dean just raised the question in gui-dev about "what are
> ya'll up to" I thought I would post back to this list a brief
> synopsis of what the 2 or 3 active persons are working on since it
> is somewhat relevant to discussions about config file syntax.
>
> Justin Seiferth and Roman Baron have been working on a Java based
> configuration frontend that Justin originally showed us some time
> back. http://butler.disa.mil/ApacheConfig/
>
> My main feedback to what is going on in this list has been an
> attempt to find a common ground protocol that we can give to any
> interface developer which would allow any number of text based,
> Java, Tcl, etc. interfaces and should provide us some portability
> to other platforms like Win32.
>
> SNMP seems to me to be the logical choice here as there has been an
> HTTP MIB under development that I think Harrie Hazewinkel has been
> involved with. I've not had success reaching Harrie to get his
> feedback on SNMP issues. Perhaps Dirk knows what's up with Harrie?
>
> As for how this relates to current discussion about added
> directives and other configuration languages, I _personally_ think
> that abstracting the configuration language out of the core would
> be a good thing. Adding SNMP to manipulate the servers
> configuration data directly would offer a rather standard API that
> could even be portable to other web servers given that they could
> adopt the same public standard. Feedback from Harrie on this issue
> would be very helpful.
>
> Given a config API to work with, I personally relish the idea of a
> telnet accessed config using similar syntax to that of a cisco
> router.
>
> On disk storage formats could then be optioned to:
>
> * SQL database
> * DB format
> * current text format
> * Win32 Registry format (god help us)
> * etc.
>
> Obviously all 2.0 issues.
>
> In a nutshell. Comments solicited.
>
> -Randy
>
>
>
>
Re: Future of configuration
Posted by Dean Gaudet <dg...@arctic.org>.
A month or so ago Doug and I were talking about the functions he needed
from the core to implement the perl config funkiness. I think we agreed
that if we could change the configuration code to read from a callback
instead of just from a file that he could do everything he needed. This
is actually very easy to implement (even as a stop-gap before SFIO in 2.0)
because all configuration code passes around a pseudo-global cmd_parms.
It would be trivial to add another two fields to that to put in a callback
with arbitrary void *data pointer. Then only one or two places need to
know about the callback.
This is a desirable change for mod_perl because it would mean mod_perl
needs access to fewer of the core functions. It could be used to
implement some other config mechanisms ... but I doubt it could be used to
do SNMP. SNMP mgmt seems like a hard thing to integrate into apache.
With the way config works in present day apache it is possible to do it
only at start/restart time. snmp and telnet interfaces would seem really
hard to retrofit... I'm assuming you want to do something while it's live
and running. And some of the optimizations I mumble about (and have
implemented already) involve doing pre-calculations at config time to save
time in the critical path. It'd suck to have to redo these calculations
(and respawn all the children) with every line entered in a telnet window
:) Or maybe I'm confused by what you want.
Dean
On Mon, 18 Aug 1997, Randy Terbush wrote:
> Since Dean just raised the question in gui-dev about "what are
> ya'll up to" I thought I would post back to this list a brief
> synopsis of what the 2 or 3 active persons are working on since it
> is somewhat relevant to discussions about config file syntax.
>
> Justin Seiferth and Roman Baron have been working on a Java based
> configuration frontend that Justin originally showed us some time
> back. http://butler.disa.mil/ApacheConfig/
>
> My main feedback to what is going on in this list has been an
> attempt to find a common ground protocol that we can give to any
> interface developer which would allow any number of text based,
> Java, Tcl, etc. interfaces and should provide us some portability
> to other platforms like Win32.
>
> SNMP seems to me to be the logical choice here as there has been an
> HTTP MIB under development that I think Harrie Hazewinkel has been
> involved with. I've not had success reaching Harrie to get his
> feedback on SNMP issues. Perhaps Dirk knows what's up with Harrie?
>
> As for how this relates to current discussion about added
> directives and other configuration languages, I _personally_ think
> that abstracting the configuration language out of the core would
> be a good thing. Adding SNMP to manipulate the servers
> configuration data directly would offer a rather standard API that
> could even be portable to other web servers given that they could
> adopt the same public standard. Feedback from Harrie on this issue
> would be very helpful.
>
> Given a config API to work with, I personally relish the idea of a
> telnet accessed config using similar syntax to that of a cisco
> router.
>
> On disk storage formats could then be optioned to:
>
> * SQL database
> * DB format
> * current text format
> * Win32 Registry format (god help us)
> * etc.
>
> Obviously all 2.0 issues.
>
> In a nutshell. Comments solicited.
>
> -Randy
>
>
>
>