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Date: Wed, 05 Jun 2002 09:35:41 -0600
From: "Brad Nicholes" <BNICHOLES@novell.com>
To: <dev@httpd.apache.org>,<wrowe@rowe-clan.net>
Cc: <bnicholes@apache.org>
Subject: Re: cvs commit: apache-1.3/src/main http_main.c
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   The reason for the "-e" parameter was to solve the following problem
on NetWare.  If you are not familiar with the NetWare console, just
remember that NetWare is not a general purpose OS and does not have a
command shell like most other OS's.  By default starting Apache on
NetWare creates a new console screen that displays the standard Apache
startup information.  If anything goes wrong before the error_log is
opened, the error message is displayed on the Apache console screen and
the screen is left open until a user hits a key.  This allows the user
to view the error message and take action as you would expect.  The
downside is that NetWare is intended to be a headless OS, which means
that the user should not have to interact directly with the console to
resolve a problem.  In addition, if Apache is started at boot time, much
like a Windows service, holding a screen open on an error condition
stops the server from booting completely (a long story but mostly due to
the fact that the console display is single threaded). Therefore NetWare
needed a way to allow a screen to be opened, not hold the console screen
open on an error condition and still display the error message to the
user.  If we just forced the console screen to close then the error
message would be lost.  So the "-e" parameter simply tells Apache to
output to the logger screen on NW6 or the main console on NW5.1 before
forcing the screen to close.  
     After having explained the reason why NetWare needs the "-e"
parameter, I think the real issue is  not the functionality but the
parameter definition (ie. the use of "-e" itself).  The parameter itself
is not really important to me.  It can be anything.  What is important
is the functionality.  If we need to change "-e" to something else, I
have not problem with that.  This same functionality has not been
implemented in Apache2 only because I have not determined yet it we have
the same problem.  The infrastructure under Apache2 is completely
different from Apache 1.3 so holding the console screen open on an error
condition does not seem to cause the same problem of stopping the
machine from booting if Apache2 is loaded as a service at boot time and
an error occurs.  

Brad

Brad Nicholes
Senior Software Engineer
Novell, Inc., a leading provider of Net business solutions
http://www.novell.com 

>>> "William A. Rowe, Jr." <wrowe@rowe-clan.net> Tuesday, June 04, 2002
10:32:03 PM >>>
At 11:21 PM 6/4/2002, William A. Rowe, Jr. wrote:
>At 10:58 AM 3/13/2002, you wrote:
>>bnicholes    02/03/13 07:58:40
>>
>>   Modified:    src/main http_main.c
>>   Log:
>>   Added the -e command line directive for NetWare to force all
fatal
>>   configuration file errors to the logger screen rather than to the
Apache
>>   screen.  This allows Apache to shutdown cleanly and completely on
an
>>   error condition without losing the error information that was
written 
>> to the
>>   screen or requiring user interaction to close the Apache screen.
>
>Can we come up with some comprimize on flags so that 1.3 and 2.0
don't
>start drifting?  Unfortunately, both 2.0.36 and 1.3.24 introduced the
two 
>different \
>meanings already.
>
>In terms of the new Netware -e meaning, it sure sounds like that
feature aught
>to be a default behavior, no?  It really sounds sorta of similar to
either 
>syslog
>logging on Unix or Event logging on NT.

To be more specific, -e sounds very much like the converse of the -w
option
on windows, which causes the window to remain open if an error is
encountered
at startup [preventing the window from being closed before the message
can be read at the console.]