Mailing List Archive

> Had a brainstorm...
>
> I would like to implement exectype negotiation in much the
> same way as language negotiation. I would appreciate some
> feedback about this.
>
> Creating an execution type config for the server:
>
> Exectype sunos_4
>
> This would allow you to have:
>
> index.sunos_4.cgi
> index.netbsd.cgi
>
> You could then share/mirror document trees between different architectures.

Is this the same thing as having two webservers (one bsd, the other solaris say)
sharing the same docuent root over NFS? I guess that you'd need a different
set of compiled CGI-BIN scripts for each architecture. So they're not sharing
the /cgi-bin/ directory, rather there's a

ScriptAlias /cgi-bin/ /usr/local/httpd/cgi-bin.sunos_4/

on one server's conf files and a

ScriptAlias /cgi-bin/ /usr/local/httpd/cgi-bin.netbsd/

sitting on another. Is this right? Are you looking for a way to build a
server farm from a set of machines with dissimilar architectures?

Mmm, seems like you're looking for a solution that allows *.cgi files
to sit anywhere under the document root and not just in scriptaliased
directories. In which case I guess that each server would have different
DefaultExecType settings in it's conf files. eg for the sunos box your conf
file would have:

<Directory /usr/local/httpd/htdocs>
DefaultExecType sunos_4
...
</Directory>

All yer published URLs could be of the form:

http://www.bleargh.com/somewhere/foo.cgi

and all you'd do is make sure that you've got a:

/usr/local/httpd/htdocs/somewhere/foo.sunos_4.cgi

What sort of URLs do you envisage your server(s) receiving in these
circumstances. And what do you do if the relevent *.<arch>.cgi isn't
there?

Can you see a way to have the same functionality, but using MultiViews?

> Should I hang this in mod_negotiation.c?

Ay.

> Mmm, seems like you're looking for a solution that allows *.cgi files
> to sit anywhere under the document root and not just in scriptaliased
> directories. In which case I guess that each server would have different
> DefaultExecType settings in it's conf files. eg for the sunos box your conf
> file would have:
>
> <Directory /usr/local/httpd/htdocs>
> DefaultExecType sunos_4
> ...
> </Directory>
>
> All yer published URLs could be of the form:
>
> http://www.bleargh.com/somewhere/foo.cgi
>
> and all you'd do is make sure that you've got a:
>
> /usr/local/httpd/htdocs/somewhere/foo.sunos_4.cgi

Exactly.


> What sort of URLs do you envisage your server(s) receiving in these
> circumstances. And what do you do if the relevent *.<arch>.cgi isn't
> there?

Receiving foo.cgi, Looking for foo."DefaultExecType".cgi, Fallback to foo.cgi

> Can you see a way to have the same functionality, but using MultiViews?

There appears to be some pretty good models in mod_negotiation.c for
handling Languages. Looks pretty easy to implement. I'll give it a go.

I can see a need for a standard naming convention for ExecTypes...

Hmmmm... direct support for this sort of thing smacks of creeping featurism,
but it may not be necessary. It's possible that if you add

AddType application/x-httpd-cgi suncgi
AddType garbage/dont-use;qs=0 bsdcgi

to the config files for the Sun server (and the opposite for the BSD box),
then a MultiViews negotiation between foo.suncgi and foo.bsdcgi would do
what Randy wants, with no new code required. (Note the "qs=0", which is
what actually would be doing the work).

rst

PS --- I say "it's possible" only because I haven't tried it...