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Date: Mon, 13 Mar 2000 01:31:05 -0500 (EST)
From: "Philippe M. Chiasson" <gozer@hbesoftware.com>
To: new-httpd@apache.org, jgsmith@jamesmith.com
Subject: Re: Server auto-reconfiguration
In-Reply-To: <200003122355.RAA13124@jamesmith.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.10.10003130127060.27798-100000@berg.hardboiledegg.com>
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Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

On Sun, 12 Mar 2000, James G Smith wrote:

> While at ApacheCon, several tired people got together late at 
> night and came up with the idea of allowing Apache to reconfigure 
> itself without requiring a rewrite of the conf file or a signal.
> 
> This would allow the server not only to react to changes in the 
> network and request environment, but also allow for the creation
> of a simple web-based configuration handler.

Yes, and it would make things like addind Vhosts without restarting your
server.  No need to have downtime at all anymore :-)
 
> Concerning the web-based configuration, this would be good for
> those users which are not savvy enough to edit the config files
> by hand or install and run Comanche -- install the binary, run
> it, and point a browser at it.  This would be useful for simple
> configurations, not all aspects of configuration at this point.
> 
> Several people are interested on working on various aspects of
> this.  The question to the list is, Is this a hairbrained idea?
> If so, why?  (I might learn something important from the reasons.)
>
I don't think its something unrealistic. (Being part of the original
discussion).  I also think I remember hearing Brian mentionning dynamic
(re)configuration at one of the Apache-2.0 talks.  I can see some stuff as
not really modyfiable, like ServerRoot, but most of the rest could be
changed at runtime without problem, IMO.

> Details such as the persistance of the configuration changes
> and communication mechanisms are still vague at this point, but
> are recognized as problems requiring a solution.  The work would
> be based on the Apache 2.0 tree.

I am willing to put some time in this, if any form of specs/wishes are
established.

> ------------------------------------+------------------------------------------
> James Smith - jgsmith@jamesmith.com | http://www.jamesmith.com/
>             jsmith@sourcegarden.org | http://sourcegarden.org/
>               jgsmith@tamu.edu      | http://cis.tamu.edu/systems/opensystems/
> ------------------------------------+------------------------------------------
> 

+-----------------------------------------------+
| Philippe M. Chiasson  <gozer@hbesoftware.com> |
| SmartWorker http://www.smartworker.org        |
|     IM : gozerhbe  ICQ : gozer/18279998       |
+-----------------------------------------------+
Recycle bits please.
#!/usr/bin/perl
$a='#!/usr/bin/perl%c$a=%c%s%c;printf($a,10,39,$a,39,10);%c';printf($a,10,39,$a,39,10);