Windows httpd V1.4c Release Notes

Please monitor the Server's New Home Page

• Changes since release (1.4)
• Changes since release (1.3)
• Feature Summary

Windows NT and Windows 95

WinSock Bugs

I have done quite a bit of work in diagnosing WinSock/TCP problems with several WinSock packages. I have passed my findings along to the authors/developers of these packages. If you are interested in my findings, see Windows HTTPD and TCP: A Report for more information. If you experience communication hangs, incomplete document deliveries, etc., try adding "-n" to the httpd command line. This disables multi-session support, disables all Windows efficiency optimizations, and reverts to simple blocking-mode operation. If this "cures" your problem, you need to gather evidence for submitting a bug report to your WinSock vendor.

Remove the "-n" and enable the network I/O tracing feature of httpd and look at the log. I will be glad to assist in interpretation. If it turns out to be a server bug, I'll fix it. If not, you'll have to live with single-session support and lower performance (with "-n turned on) until you can get your WinSock package fixed.

CGI Scripting

If you have Visual Basic, I strongly recommend that you take advantage of the Windows CGI interface. All of the CGI-required data items, plus fully decoded Mosaic forms fields, are made available by the interface. Samples, including a CGI test "script" are included with the package, in the cgi-src directory. The file CGI.BAS contains a description of the interface, plus all of the code to handle setting up the CGI environment within Visual Basic. It is also possible to use other Windows programming environments such as Access or FoxPro, but you'll need to get familiar with the environment using Visual Basic first.

Support

Also, please monitor the New Windows httpd server home page for news, updates, and contributed packages, scripts, etc.

Features supported:

• HTTP/1.0 protocol, including cache-optimizing support via "If-modified-since"
• HEAD, GET and POST methods
• Supports up to 16 simultaneous connections with fine-grain overlap
• Very fast, can deliver well over 25,000 requests/hour (4KB average, 486DX/66, VLbus Disk/Ethernet, Netmanage 4.0, Windows/Workgroups 3.11)
• Dual-mode CGI interface
  • Windows CGI interface with form field decoding
  • CGI 1.1 (modified) script interface using DOS Virtual Machine
• Server-generated directory indexes with type-specific icons, conforms to formatting of current CERN and Unix NCSA servers
• Directory indexes can be annotated with HTML links & readme file
• Automatic extract of <TITLE>...</TITLE> string from HTML documents for directory index descriptions
• Automatic mapping of MIME types to DOS file extensions
• URL aliasing and redirection permit disjoint document collections to be mapped to a virtual directory tree as seen by the server
• Includes image mapping support (Windows CGI port), pre-configured
• Global and local document access controls
• Access authentication using the "real" Unix crypt() for passwords
• Password file maintenance utility runs from DOS command line
• WinSock 1.1 compliant, uses recommended asynchronous API
• WinSock "fallback" mode for sub-standard WinSock packages (single-session only)
• Efficient cooperative multitasking, will not bog down your machine, or make clients wait on other clients' time-consuming transactions
• Common Log Format access log file
• Server can perform logfile "cycles" while running, up to 30 cycles
• Large integrated set of HTML documentation, including authoring and administration references and primers
• Demo pages (also useful for initial checkout and examples) that illustrate basic serving, ISINDEX, forms, image maps, password protection
• Extensive built-in tracing facilities to help diagnose problems

• (c) Overhauled the URL to file mapping and unmapping. Server now supports nested mapping, and mapping to UNC (remote share) paths.
• (c) Directory indexes are now generated with full URL paths in the file links, so they are valid if the directory is a target of an imagemap or CGI script.
• (c) Added empty ALT tags to directory indexes so text browsers won't see [image].
• (c) HTTP headers are now terminated with CRLF to conform to latest HTTP draft spec.
• (c) Removed deprecated MIME-type: header from HTTP headers
• (c) URL components with ~ in them are now allowed (e.g. /~xyz/).
• (c) The sequence /./ in a URL is now removed.
• (c) The Wizard CGI configuration now allows use of ~i and ~o tokens in the ShellExecTemplate.

• (b) Open CGI output file in binary mode so CGI program can return non-text content.
• (b) Fix automatic "URL-fixup redirection" for bogus but common directory URLs without a trailing slash.
• (b) Apply CERT-9504 patch (part2) to strsubfirst() just in case.
• (b) Hide SYSTEM and HIDDEN files from automatic directory listings.
• (b) Fix GPF if CGI program returned "Status:" header.
• (b) Supress DNS error message in httpd.log on server startup unless network I/O tracing is enabled.
• (b) Unconditionally pass authenticated username through CGI interfaces if present in HTTP request.

• (a) Convert backslashes in URLs to legal URL path separators (/).
• (a)Fix "too busy" response logic to prevent hard close of socket on simple GET requests. This showed up as a Internal Error -10057 on Netscape.
• (a)Fix WinCGI form decoding HUGE threshold (was 2048, now is 65535)

• Increased the maximum simultaneous connects from 8 to 16 to accommodate NetScape's overlapping fetches. This increases the maximum memory that may be needed by httpd substantially, so be careful.
• New image mapper that supports ellipse shapes. Uses Windows graphics primitives for hit-testing ellipses, rectangles and polygons.
• Fixed problem that caused a GPF when client cancelled a request at the same time server finished the request and was closing the socket.
• Fixed problems where cancelling multiple requests in rapid-fire succession caused a GPF due to resuming an already running thread.
• Added -r command line option. DNS client reverse lookups are not done by default in this version. -r enables DNS client reverse lookups. Note that the latest version of my VBStats package does the DNS reverse lookups at the time the log info is imported into the database.
• Fixed file handle leak that would occur under rare circumstances when client cancelled transaction.
• Fixed file handle leak when using per-directory access control files (#haccess.ctl).
• Removed the need to edit WIN.INI to increase the system-wide default message queue size. The application now sets its own queue size as needed. (RTFM, Robert!).
• Server now attempts to recover from a failure of the "listener" socket by closing it and trying to recreate and rebind it. It will try to do this 10 times. After that, it assumes that the WinSock package is truly hosed and shuts down the server. Previously, the server would loop furiously, appearing to go to sleep, and fill the httpd.log file with accept failed messages.
• Keys are now unescaped during automatic form decoding for the Windows CGI interface. This fixes the problem of international chars in forms keys.
• Common Log Format was fixed to format the correct GMT-offset for positive offset. Was reporting "+-100" for +1 hour offset, for example.
• Supress logging of network read/write errors unless -x0x1 bit is set on command line. Aborted connections are normal in HTTP.
• Form decoding now unescapes both keywords and values.
• Disabled icon animation due to lack of time to make a set of new animated icon images.

Return to the Overview