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Open Source Technologies

Notes Commands
Special commands sent to the Apache server in the HTTP Header can be captured and handled
with the function pointed to by this slot. These are typically used to configure the module before
the associated registered hooks are called.
Register Hooks
This is a pointer to a function that details the hooks that this module handles. The convention
is for the function to be called, of all things, ‘register_hooks’. There are lots and lots of potential
hooks. We only needed one type, the ap_hook_handler.
helloworld2_handler
Our actual handler takes the form of:

static int foobar_handler(request_rec *r)

Where foobar is replaced with the name of the handler. Our first action in the handler is to set
the return messages content type to ‘text/html’. We send the return header with:

ap_send_http_header(r);
Now we can send some text. In our case this is the ‘Hello’. We finish up by sending the macro OK.

3.2 Choosing Appropriate Installation Method

The Apache Web server is arguably the most popular Web server in use on the Internet today.
Here are some of the reasons why Apache is so popular; you don’t have to be running Windows
to run Apache. It was developed on various Unix/Linux/BSD platforms, and then recently
ported to Win32. Internet Information Server, a Web server made by Microsoft for the Windows
NT platform, is made for use in the “Windows-only” world. While IIS has many features, it’s
lack of portability limits it’s market share. Another reason for Apache’s widespread acceptance
is its overall stability. While you can slow down an Apache Web server, you can rarely, if ever,
kill one. The Apache Web server service is near bulletproof.

Apache has been shown to be substantially faster, more stable, and more feature-full than
many other web servers. Although certain commercial servers have claimed to surpass
Apache’s speed (it has not been demonstrated that any of these “benchmarks” are a good
way of measuring WWW server speed at any rate). The developers of Apache feel that it is
better to have a mostly fast free server than an extremely fast server that costs thousands of
dollars. Apache is run on sites that get millions of hits per day, and they have experienced no
performance difficulties.

3.2.1 Installation Options
You can download Apache from the Apache Software Foundation web site located at
http://www.apache.org, in source and binary forms. While your downloading Apache, you
may want to browse over the documentation.
3.2.2 What You Need

To install Apache, you will need the following things:
1. A computer running Linux.

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