Things You Didn't Know Apache (2.2) Could Do | Hacker News Reader

Things You Didn't Know Apache (2.2) Could Do

linux-mag.com

56 pointslinuxmag21 comments

Thanks for posting this. I wasn't aware that Apache 2.2.12 supported SNI out of the box. SNI is kind of a big deal. It means that you can have multiple virtual hosts running HTTPS on the same IP address.

mod_proxy_balancer is also a very nice feature worth some attention.

SNI looks nice but considering that amount of SSL libraries out there that don't support it (including browsers), it will probably be something like 5-10 years before we could deploy SNI for a general purpose site/service.

From https://sni.velox.ch/:

  Opera 8.0 and later (the TLS 1.1 protocol must be enabled)
  Internet Explorer 7 or later (under Windows Vista and later only, not under Windows XP)
  Firefox 2.0 or later
  Curl 7.18.1 or later (when compiled against an SSL/TLS toolkit with SNI support)
  Chrome (under Windows Vista and later only, not under Windows XP)
  Safari 3.0 or later (when running under OS X 10.5.6 or later and under Windows Vista)

In other words, it's going to be 5-10 years before you'll be able to use it. =)

If I had a job where I seriously thought I'd be supporting Windows XP and IE6 for the next ten years, I'd kill myself.

That's good to know.

Elucidating you, tptacek, is my highest priority.

You can start by looking up the word "elucidate".

  elucidate
  verb [ trans. ]  
  make (something) clear; explain

As usual, you have no point whatsoever. Glad to see the fan club noticed though. Why don't you "tweet" about it?

He may have meant that elucidate does not take "you" as an object unless the thing being made clear is the subject matter "you."

At any rate, can you guys take this to email or something? :-)

Something else most may have not known about apache is it has a built-in server-side scripting feature, think php w/o loops, called mod_include http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shtml In the purest sense though, it is templating for html.

This feature is a bit dated and unnecessarily redundant if you write php, but could be great a addition if your back-end requires CGI or you don't wanna 'messy' up your pretty mark-up with php. ;)

I'm pretty sure SNI has browser support issues.

From Wikipedia:

The following combinations do not support SNI: * Windows XP and Internet Explorer

Well that's going to be a bit of an issue then.

IE7 Vista supports it, IIRC, but lack of IE6 support is still a dealbreaker.

Apache does too much. Whatever happened to the Unix dictum to "do one thing well"? I think this is actually a good reason for switching to Nginx whenever possible, where the conf files are tiny enough to be readable by mortals.

Dear writer. In the future, please refrain from telling your visitors "Well if you ain't gonna read the whole thing here's the best". Having your article on one fucking page usually ensures people will scroll to the bottom. Thank you.

Why is this being downvoted?

Cause no one likes me :(

by reading your profile I could see that was you first comment, please don't post such comments in the first place.

Content is to be discussed, not style

You mistake me for someone who cares.

Well, here's a rough summary of the post:

Instead of commenting on the content of the article, I am going to complain about tangential meta-issues.

Dunno about downvoting, but at the least it's hardly something I feel compelled to upvote.

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