The Apache Software Foundation and The Apache Server Project are pleased to announce the release of version 1.3.22 of the Apache HTTP server. Apache version 1.3.21 was never released; this Announcement details the cumulative changes in 1.3.21 and 1.3.22.

This version of Apache is principally a security fix release which closes some problems where a directory listing could be obtained instead of the default index page. A summary of the bug fixs and major new features is given at the end of this document.

We consider Apache 1.3.22 to be the best version of Apache available and we strongly recommend that users of older versions, especially of the 1.1.x and 1.2.x family, upgrade as soon as possible. No further releases will be made in the 1.2.x family.

Apache 1.3.22 is available for download from

http://httpd.apache.org/dist/httpd/

Please see the CHANGES_1.3 file in the same directory for a full list of changes.

Binary distributions are available from

http://httpd.apache.org/dist/httpd/binaries/

The source and binary distributions are also available via any of the mirrors listed at

http://www.apache.org/mirrors/

As of Apache 1.3.17, Win32 binary distributions are now based on the Microsoft Installer (.MSI) technology. This change occured in order to resolve the many problems WinME and Win2K users experienced with the older InstallShield-based installer.exe file. While development continues to make this new installation method more robust, questions should be directed at the news:comp.infosystems.www.servers.ms-windows newsgroup.

As of Apache 1.3.12 binary distributions contain all standard Apache modules as shared objects (if supported by the platform) and include full source code. Installation is easily done by executing the included install script. See the README.bindist and INSTALL.bindist files for a complete explanation. Please note that the binary distributions are only provided for your convenience and current distributions for specific platforms are not always available.

For an overview of new features introduced after 1.2 please see

http://httpd.apache.org/docs/new_features_1_3.html

In general, Apache 1.3 offers several substantial improvements over version 1.2, including better performance, reliability and a wider range of supported platforms, including Windows NT and 2000 (which fall under the "Win32" label), OS2, Netware, and TPE threaded platforms.

Apache is the most popular web server in the known universe; over half of the servers on the Internet are running Apache or one of its variants.

IMPORTANT NOTE FOR WIN32 USERS: Over the years, many users have come to trust Apache as a secure and stable server. It must be realized that the current Win32 code has not yet reached the levels of the Unix version, but is of acceptable quality. Win32 stability or security problems do not reflect on the Unix version.

Apache 1.3.20 - 1.3.22 Major changes

Security vulnerabilities

• A vulnerability was found in the Win32 port of Apache 1.3.20. A client submitting a very long URI could cause a directory listing to be returned rather than the default index page. A 403 Forbidden will now be returned. CAN-2001-0729
• A vulnerability was found in the split-logfile support program. A request with a specially crafted Host: header could allow any file with a .log extension on the system to be written to. PR#7848 CAN-2001-0730
• A vulnerability was found when Multiviews are used to negotiate the directory index. In some configurations, requesting a URI with a QUERY_STRING of M=D could return a directory listing rather than the expected index page. CAN-2001-0731

New features

• The user manual has been updated. As well as a number of small fixes these updates include new translations into French and Japanese, a guide to using Apache httpd on Cygwin, a lexicon of Apache error messages, updated TPF documentation, and a comprehensive guide to using log files
• The user manual can now be moved out of the htdocs DocumentRoot during installation by invoking configure with the --manualdir= switch, to allow separation of on-line docs from regular contents.
• The supplied icons are now also distributed in PNG format
• A significant overhaul to the Apache Bench program, ab has taken place, as first reported in April. The new Apache Bench includes fixes, additional statistics, csv and gnuplot output, and some SSL support
• New directives have been added to the mod_usertrack module, The first, CookieDomain, can be used to customise the Domain attribute. The patch to add the CookieDomain directive was first submitted over two years ago. Historically mod_usertrack has used the obsolete Netscape cookie syntax. The new CookieStyle directive allows use of the RFC2109 or RFC2965 syntax instead. PR#5023, PR#5920, PR#6140.
• The server will now display a warning if line-end comments (#) are found in the configuration file. Not all directives are able to handle comments on the same line
• A new directive, AcceptMutex, allows run-time configuration of the mutex type used for accept serialization, currently a compile-time only setting in 1.3. Since different types of mutex have different performance characteristics on different platforms, this directive will allow administrators to tune their Apache server more easily. The current list of possible methods is: uslock, pthread, sysvsem, fcntl, flock, os2sem, tpfcore, none. Not all platforms support all methods
• mod_auth has been enhanced to allow access to a document to be controlled based on the owner of the file being served. Require file-owner will only allow files to be served where the authenticated username matches the user that owns the document. Require file-group works in a similar way checking that the group matches

• A new directive, AcceptFilter, has been added to control BSD accept filters at run-time. This should make it easier to move server binaries across different BSD machines without requiring recompilation. Support for accept filters was first added to version 1.3.14, the functionality can postpone the requirement for a child process to handle a new connection until an HTTP request has arrived, therefore increasing the number of connections that a given number of child processes can handle
• On Win32 mod_unique_id, mod_mime_magic, and the mod_vhost_alias modules are now enabled
• The Cygwin port includes a number of fixes and updates. Cygwin support was first introduced in version 1.3.20
• On Windows 2000, the service display names can now be modified by the user (use the service control panel applet)
• On Win32 a new option -W can be used to set up a dependency on another service, see win_service.html
• The server will now take advantage of recent improvements to the TPF operating system which include an enhanced system fork and exec, updates to allow non-blocking file descriptors, and an update to shutdown processing

Bugs fixed

• Under certain circumstances a child may crash due to a bug in mod_include. If a server uses an ErrorDocument for 404 (request not found) errors which points to a server-parsed HTML file which uses a [an error occurred while processing this directive] section, then a request containing %2f will result in a segfault. The segfault is harmless and does not cause a security problem, but is being triggered by the recent IIS worm
• The Multiviews functionality has been fixed to prevent mod_negotiation from serving any multiview variant that contains unknown filename extensions. PR#8130
• Apache will prefer installed version of the Expat library over the bundled version. This fixes conflicts when multiple copies of the Expat library get loaded (notably when using mod_perl and XML::Parsers::Expat)
• UnsetEnv now works from the main body of a configuration file. PR#8254
• When used as a reverse proxy any headers set by other modules (such as mod_usertrack or mod_securid) now get passed on to the back-end server. PR#6055
• Server response headers can now be logged via the proxy. PR#7461
• mod_proxy will now pay attention to HTTP headers that specify the request is not to be cached. PR#5668
• When a client making a request via mod_proxy died unexpectedly, mod_proxy did not close its connection. PR#8090
• The CacheForceCompletion directive has been fixed PR#7383, PR#8067, PR#6585
• A memory leak has been fixed in the mod_mime_magic module
• A Satisfy All option has been added to the default container designed to stop access to .htaccess files. Without this directive, these files could still be fetched if they were within the scope of a Satisfy Any directive.

The following bugs relate to specific platforms:

• A number of fixes for NetWare have been added. These include: enabling long file names in htpasswd and htdigest, protection against ill behaved modules, better handling of abnormal shutdowns, dealing with the limited stack space during server side includes, and recognising special filenames such as proxy:http:// correctly
• A shutdown hang could occur on Solaris when using lots of piped TransferLogs and at least one piped ErrorLog
• On EBCDIC platforms a bug in the proxy module stopped SSL proxying working
• On Win32, mod_unique_id did not guarantee a unique ID due to threading
• The Win32 Makefiles are now 100% compatible with the Microsoft Visual C++ compiler versions 5,6,7

Related Stories:
Apache 1.3.20 Released(May 21, 2001)
Apache 2.0.16 released as beta(Apr 09, 2001)
Apache 2.0.15 released as an alpha(Mar 28, 2001)
Apache 1.3.19 Released(Mar 01, 2001)
Apache 1.3.17 released(Jan 29, 2001)