Apache: The Definitive Guide, Second Edition

Appendix C. NCSA and Apache Compatibility

This email was sent by Alexei Kosut to the members of the Apache Group to explain the compatibility problems between the NCSA server and Apache 1.1.1.

There has been some discussion lately about the end of NCSA httpd development, and Apache replacing it for once and all, and so forth and so on...anyhow, I just thought I'd take this opportunity to point out what NCSA httpd 1.5.2 does that Apache does not currently do, feature and config-file wise:

• NCSA supplements the Redirect directive with the RedirectTemp and RedirectPermanent directives, to allow for 301 redirects as well as 302. This is very simple to do.

• NCSA optionally supports Kerberos authentication. I know there's a module out there that does as well; is it compatible with the NCSA syntax?

• Speaking of auth syntax, NCSA's dbm implementation is different than ours. Namely, where we use:

  AuthUserFile /some/flat/file
  AuthDBMUserFile /some/dbm/file

  NCSA uses:

  AuthUserFile /some/flat/file standard
  AuthUserFile /some/dbm/file dbm

• Satisfy. There are enough patches floating around; can't we just commit one already (one that works, hopefully)?

• The KeepAlive syntax in NCSA httpd is different from ours. KeepAliveTimeout is the same in both, but we use KeepAlive where they use MaxKeepAliveRequests (and 0 means different things in the two), and they have an additional KeepAlive On/Off directive. It can be made to work, it just doesn't now.

• NCSA supports CERN imagemap format as well as NCSA. ...