GoAhead WebServer in RTEMS

[Steven Johnson]

Hello

We have just started using the GoAhead Webserver bundled with RTEMS.

I did dome looking into the server once we started using it, to see what 
the licence is, etc.

I came away a bit disturbed from this.

The product seems to be orphaned.  The licence requires any 
modifications made to be submitted back to the copyright holder, which 
would be GoAhead.  But there have been no changes to the latest release 
(2.1.8), since November 2003.  That's a long time.

There are a number of "community" fixes to 2.1.8, and also a number of 
security advisories relating to the server code.  One of those is fixed 
in the RTEMS code base, the other does not appear to be.

I thought if I am going to have a product with a web server in it, I 
want it to be reliable so, I have upgraded all files necessary and used 
by RTEMS to 2.1.8 status.  I did not want any lurking bugs that have 
already been "officially" fixed causing me problems.

That is the first patch attached to this email.  It also contains the 
"official" change log between 2.1.4 and 2.1.8, so you can see the 
fixes/changes that have been made.

I also went through the "community" bug fixes and security advisories 
and applied all relevant fixes.  Things I think may be of interest to 
RTEMS, in particular is the WebServer will not run on 64 bit hardware.  
The attached 2.1.8-to-2.1.8-2 patch will make it function properly on 64 
bit hardware, as well as a number of other fixes.  See the NOTES file 
for a full list of fixes.

I have tested to see if these break the server.  They do not, at least 
as far as our application uses it.  I think it would be worthwhile 
having the latest, most bug fixed code for this available in RTEMS.

I also had some concern about the "We must put the web server logo on 
our first page", because as bundled there was no logo.  There was also 
no documentation, so it was difficult to work out how to get it 
working.  I downloaded the official documentation, included with the 
2.1.8 official archive.  It includes the logo's and also API 
documentation.  I have extracted that from the official archive.  It is 
about a 466K tgz file.  I think it would be worthwhile if this was 
Included with the official RTEMS distribution.  At the very least, the 
Logo's should be, so that one can easily comply with the licence.  I am 
happy to post this to the list, or put it somewhere appropriate if it is 
desired to be included with RTEMS.  The reason I say this, is it would 
be bad if GoAhead stop their official distributing of the WebServer and 
then new (or existing) users of RTEMS who wanted to use the server would 
not be able to access the documentation.  That's also why I think it 
should be updated to the latest code available, because GoAhead are 
never going to have an "official" version which supports RTEMS.

On another topic, did my gethostbyname_r patch make it to the list?  I 
am not sure if it did or not.

Steven Johnson






-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: rtems-httpd-2.1.4-to-2.1.8.patch.gz
Type: application/x-gzip
Size: 25596 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.rtems.org/pipermail/users/attachments/20061028/b2705dc5/attachment.bin>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: rtems-httpd-2.1.8-to-2.1.8-2.patch.gz
Type: application/x-gzip
Size: 8004 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.rtems.org/pipermail/users/attachments/20061028/b2705dc5/attachment-0001.bin>