lighty's life

ChangeLog:

• added initgroups in spawn-fcgi (#871)
• added apr1 support htpasswd in mod-auth (#870)
• fixed segfault in splitted CRLF CRLF sequences (introduced in 1.4.12) (#876)
• fixed compilation of LOCK support in mod-webdav
• fixed fragments in request-URLs (#869)
• fixed pkg-config check for lua5.1 on debian

ChangeLog:

• added experimental LOCK support for webdav
• added Content-Range support for PUT in webdav
• added support for += on empty arrays in config-files
• added ssl.cipher-list and ssl.use-sslv2
• added $HTTP[“querystring”] conditional
• added mod_magnet as long-term replacement for mod_cml
• added work-around for a Opera Bug with SSL + Chunked-Encoding
• changed—print-config to print to stdout instead of stderr
• changed no longer use 0600 for new files with webdav. umask is honored. Make sure you have set a proper umask.
• fixed upload hangs with SSL
• fixed connection drops with SSL (aka bad retry)
• fixed path traversal with \ on cygwin
• fixed mem-leak in mod_flv_streaming
• fixed required trailing newline in configfiles (#142)
• fixed quoting the autoconf files (#466)
• fixed empty Host: + $HTTP[“host”] handling (#458)
• fixed handling of If-Modified-Since if ETag is not set
• fixed default-shell if SHELL is not set (#441)
• fixed appending and assigning of env.* vars
• fixed empty FCGI_STDERR packets
• fixed conditional server.allow-http-11
• fixed handling of follow-symlink + lstat()
• fixed SIGHUP handling if max-workers is used
• fixed “Software caused connection abort” messages on FreeBSD

ChangeLog:

• added experimental LOCK support for webdav
• added Content-Range support for PUT in webdav
• added support for += on empty arrays in config-files
• added ssl.cipher-list and ssl.use-sslv2
• added $HTTP[“querystring”] conditional
• added mod_magnet as long-term replacement for mod_cml
• added work-around for a Opera Bug with SSL + Chunked-Encoding
• changed—print-config to print to stdout instead of stderr
• fixed upload hangs with SSL
• fixed connection drops with SSL (aka bad retry)
• fixed path traversal with \ on cygwin
• fixed mem-leak in mod_flv_streaming
• fixed required trailing newline in configfiles (#142)
• fixed quoting the autoconf files (#466)
• fixed empty Host: + $HTTP[“host”] handling (#458)
• fixed handling of If-Modified-Since if ETag is not set
• fixed default-shell if SHELL is not set (#441)
• fixed appending and assigning of env.* vars
• fixed empty FCGI_STDERR packets
• fixed conditional server.allow-http-11
• fixed handling of follow-symlink + lstat()
• fixed SIGHUP handling if max-workers is used
• fixed “Software caused connection abort” messages on FreeBSD

Introducing

I myself, have used apc, mmcache/ea, ZendOptimizer, The only 3 choices before xcache. ab cache is too old and dead, saidly, before i use it. Every one of u write php script know them, and have one if them boost your php performance, because they're good.

But "What? Why you just introduce another opcode cacher?" It take some time to explain ... the short term: it give you one more choice. the long term: mmcache/ea is the most optimized php-opcache. ZendOptimizer isn't pre-built on all platform -- they release binary not source file. apc was stable on php4 but not works with php5, and now, is said works with php5 but php4 is left to desert...

Highlight spot of xcache

1. cacher, similar as other opcaches.
2. opcode disassembler, to see how your scripts looks after they're compiled into opcode.
3. grows as php grows, using automated discover scheme by the devel, and the new changes to xcache to catch up new php version is brought to you easily.
4. php4.x lastest is stably supported, php5.x lastest just works, php6-devel is supported for your further vision.
5. many more ...

New function for script

$ grep proto *.c

mixed xcache_get(string name)
bool  xcache_set(string name, mixed value [, int ttl])
mixed xcache_isset(string name)
bool  xcache_unset(string name)
int   xcache_inc(string name [, int value [, int ttl]])
int   xcache_dec(string name [, int value [, int ttl]])

other proto need documented.

How to install

$ wget http://blog.lighttpd.net/files/xcache-preview.tar.gz
$ tar -zxf xcache-preview.tar.gz
$ cd xcache-preview
$ phpize
$ cat ./conf
$ ./configure --help
$ ./configure --enable-xcache-disassembler
$ make
$ su
# make install

take care about the output of make install append the following to php.ini:

[xcache]
xcache.size = 64M
xcache.mmap_path = "/tmp/xcache"
xcache.cacher = 1
zend_extension="/usr/.../extensions/..../xcache.so"
# or
extension="xcache.so"

Testing

restart your php (fastcgi or mod_php), check output for xcache status. if you see it there, you're done.

and finally test the opcode dumper:

$ ./phpdop.phpr ./phpdop.phpr
$ ./phpdc.phpr ./phpdc.phpr

Patch for hardened source (not tested)

Index: processor.m4
===================================================================
--- processor.m4    (revision 27)
+++ processor.m4    (working copy)
@@ -575,6 +575,9 @@

    /* reserved */
    DONE(reserved)
+ #if defined(HARDENING_PATCH) && HARDENING_PATCH
+   DISPATCH(zend_bool, created_by_eval)
+ #endif
    } while (0);
 ')
 dnl }}}

it is suggested to modify processor/processor.m4 directly as there might be spaces lost in blog.

It was originally implemented to debug the new condition caching system internally for developers only.

But i found it nice for user to debug how to condition is matching, seeing the 2 values on both side of the operator, and if they matched. A new patch was commited to make it a bit cleaner for your use.

1. just add or uncomment: debug.log-condition-handling = "enable" in your configuration.
2. restart your lighttpd, or start it with sbin/lighttpd -Df lighttpd.conf
3. request the url, and check the error.log, or stderr in case u haven't specified error.log

./sbin/ligittpd -pf test.conf

config {
  var.PID                      = 25629
  var.CWD                      = "/usr/src/lighttpd/branches/lighttpd-merge-1.4.x"
  server.modules               = ("mod_indexfile", "mod_staticfile")
  server.port                  = 8080
  server.document-root         = "/tmp"
  debug.log-condition-handling = "enable"


  $HTTP["useragent"] =~ "MSIE" {
    # block 1

  } # end of $HTTP["useragent"] =~ "MSIE"
}

./sbin/lighttpd -Df test.conf

2006-04-02 13:40:05: (src/log.c.75) server started 
2006-04-02 13:40:07: (src/response.c.150) run condition 
2006-04-02 13:40:07: (src/configfile-glue.c.404) === start of 1 condition block === 
2006-04-02 13:40:07: (src/configfile-glue.c.356)
HTTP["useragent"] ( Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1) ) compare to MSIE 
2006-04-02 13:40:07: (src/configfile-glue.c.419) 1 result: true

See also: advanced configuration in 1.4.x, lighttpd unleashed part one, lighttpd unleashed part two

A example for nested confitionals went already into the announcement:

$HTTP["host"] == "www.example.org" {
  $HTTP["url"] =~ "^/dav($|/)" {
    webdav.activate = "enable" 
  }
  $HTTP["remoteip"] != "10.0.0.0/16" {
    auth.require = ( "" => ( "method" => "basic",
                             "realm" => "webdav",
                             "require" => "valid-user" ) )
  }
}

But what are includes for ? For a start we want to go the mass-hosting way and want to create a generic pattern for virtual hosts without using mod_simple_vhost or similar modules.

We have a simple webserver structure:

• all servers are under /var/www/servers/
• the part is the hostname of the server
• and logs and public files are at logs/ and pages/

resulting in /var/www/servers/www.example.org/pages/.

In lighttpd 1.3.x you had to copy the conditionals for all host including all the options. There was no way to do some interpretation of the config file.

In lighttpd 1.4.0 this has changed and we can use expressions and includes:

server.document-root = "/tmp" 
server.port = 1025

server.modules = ( "mod_access" )

access.deny = ( "~", ".inc" )

$HTTP["host"] == "www.example.org" {
  var.hostname = "www.example.org" 
  include "baseconfig.conf" 
}

$HTTP["host"] == "www2.example.org" {
  var.hostname = "www2.example.org" 
  include "baseconfig.conf" 
}

and a baseconfig.conf

server.document-root = "/var/www/servers/" + hostname + "/pages/" 
access.logfile = "/var/www/servers/" + hostname + "/logs/accesslog" 

With var.hostname you can set a user-variable in the configuration which can be used everywhere in the config to pass data around. We use it here to substiture the parts of the baseconfig for each host and set the document-root and the location of the accesslog for each host.

But how does the config look like that is used by lighttpd ? The option -p will tell us:

$ /lighttpd -p -f ./lighttpd-includes.conf
config {
    server.document-root = "/tmp" 
    server.port          = 1025
    server.modules       = ("mod_indexfile", "mod_access", "mod_dirlisting", "mod_staticfile")
    access.deny          = ("~", ".inc")

    $HTTP["host"] == "www.example.org" {
        # block 1
        var.hostname         = "www.example.org" 
        server.document-root = "/var/www/servers/www.example.org/pages/" 
        access.logfile       = "/var/www/servers/www.example.org/logs/accesslog" 

    } # end of $HTTP["host"] == "www.example.org" 

    $HTTP["host"] == "www2.example.org" {
        # block 2
        var.hostname         = "www2.example.org" 
        server.document-root = "/var/www/servers/www2.example.org/pages/" 
        access.logfile       = "/var/www/servers/www2.example.org/logs/accesslog" 

    } # end of $HTTP["host"] == "www2.example.org" 
}

Nice, isn’t it ? :)

$ lighttpd -h
lighttpd-1.4.1 (ssl) (Aug 23 2005 16:37:21) - a light and fast webserver
usage:
 -f <name>  filename of the config-file
 -p         print the parsed config-file in internal form, and exit
 -t         test the config-file, and exit
 -D         don't go to background (default: go to background)
 -6         use IPv6
 -v         show version
 -h         show this help

The new options are -p and -t. They will help you to check that is everything is ok, before you start lighttpd with the new configuration.

$ lighttpd -t -f ./lighttpd.conf
Syntax OK

Especially if you start to use the the new features of lighttpd 1.4.0 like includes and expressions the print out of the parsed configuration will help you to see if everything really worked out as planed.

The WebDAV support is interesting for everyone using modern webdevelopment tools or something like webdav-fs.

You can savely (via SSL and secured by Authentication) edit, move and copy files in there source form while they user is able to see the generate content in the browser.

The other big feature (I think far more important) is the support for nested conditionals in the configuration. Now you can write configurations like:

$HTTP["host"] == "www.example.org" {
  $HTTP["url"] =~ "^/dav($|/)" {
    webdav.activate = "enable" 
  }
  $HTTP["remoteip"] != "10.0.0.0/16" {
    auth.require = ( "" => ( "method" => "basic",
                             "realm" => "webdav",
                             "require" => "valid-user" ) )
  }
}

... to enable webdav support in the /dav/ directory of www.example.org and allows all users from the local network to access the host without authentication.

Over the next days we will write some tutorials which will illustrate the new features in the configuration more briefly (like the different include optoins, variable substitution and the like).

If you want to cheat, take a look into the manual.