What is the Amiga Apache Server?

To be as simple as possible: It's a program which makes World Wide Web pages available to everyone who point a webbrowser to your Internet site. Every webpage on the Internet (or intranet) is served by an so called httpdaemon (hyper text transfer protocol daemon). Apache is a new web server for UNIX machines and now for the Amiga, based on the Apache Group's code.

The Apache httpdaemon is derived from the NCSA httpd sources which is commenly used on the internet. It will enhance your Amiga Server tremendously, and can make it one of the best servers ever (with the proper support ;).





Who is who?

The Amiga Apache project is runned by Amiga volunteers who think that the Amiga could benefit from a professional http server like Apache. We do it for free, since the Apache sources are for free too. The real work is therefore not done by us, but at the Apache server project. However, it still needs a lot of work before it runs on the Amiga.

At this moment there are three of us: Jeff Shepherd, who does the really hard work, Bert Vortman, the webmaster, package maintainer & developer of the Amiga Apache homepage, and Brett Burridge, the maintainer of the FAQ. The sources are compiled by Jeff Shepherd, who compiled succesfully the Pine, Pico, Pilot, Imapd and Ipopd sources. He is also one of the developers of the Ixemul.library, he added the network support of ixemul. You can find more information about these projects at Jeff's homepage



What has happened until now?

Well, basically, Jeff has compiled the sources and made some changes in the Ixemul.library in order to run Apache. The 1.3b3 sources are succesfully compiled now and it looks like that the server will run stable. We are now at the 1.3 release, since the 1.0.5 apache version that Jeff Shepherd uploaded to the Aminet archives. We feel now confident in the stability of Apache and therefore released them at the Apache homepage. Brett has set up an excellent site for the FAQ at: http://babylon6.demon.co.uk/apache. If you have something to add to the FAQ, send them to: apache@babylon6.demon.co.uk Bert is maintaining the Website, the amiga documentation and is taking care the mailinglists

There are now 2 mailinglists (at Bert's site) for beta-testers and Apache users. If you want to contribute to the project by being a beta-tester, send a mail to:

Majordomo@spinnewiel.xs4all.nl

With the message:

subscribe apache-l

Or if you want to talk to other Apache users, subscribe to the apache-users mailinglist by sending a mail to:

Majordomo@spinnewiel.xs4all.nl

With the message:

subscribe apache-users





What's in the future?

With the help of the Amiga Apache server it is possible to make a real professional internet server out of the Amiga with enhanced capabilities. Here are some idea's:

These things are possible with the REXX interface that most of the Amiga programs supports. For example: you can a make HTML page where you put a form with some questions. With 'submit' you execute a REXX program that reads the data from the html form, puts the data in a database (Fiasco or Superbase for example), and returns with a message. It's then very easy to maintain the data, much easier than on a UNIX machine. Print it, save it, make a chart, save it in Lotus 123 format, delete it, port it to a PC, etc, etc. The possibilities are endless, use your own creativity! These kind of applications are very easy to make with a little knowledge of REXX and sh.

If you have made an application or a script that uses the Apache webserver, please let us know! Send us also the location of sites that really uses Amiga Apache (It does not matter if the site is 24h a day online or not!)

Last update: Friday, 12-Dec-97 14:43:35 MET Bert Vortman.