New Apache

Just recently, Apache httpd 2.2.0 was released.

Now, I've been a bit traditional here. I'm still using apache 1.3.34, almost always with mod_jk to talk to tomcat, and occasionally with mod_ssl for https support.

Why not upgrade? Well, there are two reasons really. One was that it wasn't at all obvious that 2.0.x was in fact an upgrade. It always felt like a retrograde step and if anything I would describe 1.3.x to 2.0.x as downgrading. The second is that actually getting 2.0.x installed was a right pain. They mistakenly switched to using autoconf, so it's much harder to get the installation and configuration right. (If it installs at all. Many a time I would find autoconf just goofing out on one of its random guesses and failing to do anything at all.)

So, is 2.2.0 any better? Well, it still uses autoconf - and it's still a very bad move - but it is possible with enough effort to circumvent most of its mistakes (although not all). But it includes ajp support to talk to tomcat, including load balancing. Which, coupled with native ssl support, should reduce the complexity of installation - if it works.

So far, running under Solaris 10 works fine for http. I haven't exhaustively tested the ajp support to see how well it handles load balancing and failover, but basically it works and looks good.

I had fun and games with getting https to work though. Essentially, the combination of httpd 2.2.0, gcc and the Solaris 10 openssl libraries didn't work. (Using curl I could get sslv2 to work but not sslv3, and neither mozilla nor firefox would have anything to d with my server.) Compiling up the latest openssl myself (which is what I do for 1.3.x anyway) with gcc works just fine. So it's either a gcc vs. cc incompatibility, or a version problem (Sun are supplying quite an old version), or some other strange incompatibility. It would be nice if I could rely on the openssl bits that come with Solaris, as openssl itself is a reasonable size and takes quite a while to build, but it looks as if I still have to do it myself.