Frontpage 98 extensions don’t play well with Apache 1.3.4

 

   From: Sitzkrieg Redundus <sitz@ONASTICK.NET>
 Subject: Frontpage extensions under Apache 1.3.4
    Date: Fri, 19 Feb 1999 18:31:23 -0500
      To: BUGTRAQ@netspace.org
Reply-To: Sitzkrieg Redundus <sitz@ONASTICK.NET>

I spent the bulk my time a few days back convincing the Frontpage 98
extensions and Apache 1.3.4 (patched with patch version 3.0.4.3) to play
nicely. After banging my head against it for a few hours, I got things to
what I thought was a workable point, and fired up httpd. And got an error
back about there being a syntax error on line 1 of /dev/null.

*blink*

By default, Apache 1.3.4 places all runtime directives in httpd.conf, and
leaves srm.conf and access.conf empty.

From the default httpd.conf:

" You can have the server ignore these files altogether by using
'/dev/null' (for Unix) or  "nul" (for Win32) for the arguments to the
directives."

Great. Except that when creating a root web, fp_install.sh calls
fpsrvadm.exe, which moves the file specified by the "ResourceConfig"
directive "file.bak" and installs its own. Thus, on systems running the
Apache 1.3.4 where the user has followed the advice in the
httpd.conf (or
*any* Apache install which points ResourceConfig and AccessConfig to
/dev/null for that matter) we see before:

stanis# ls -la /dev/null
crw-rw-rw-   1 root     root       1,   3 Feb  4 16:35 /dev/null

and after:

-rw-rw-r--   1 root     root           67 Feb  4 17:56 /dev/null
crw-rw-rw-   1 root     root       1,   3 Feb  4 16:35 /dev/null.bak

Silly fpsrvadm.... what have we told you about playing with character
devices? Heh... nothing, it seems.

When I spoke with Ready-to-Run on the phone, they indicated
that Apache 1.3.4 wasn't a supported platform. As previously noted,
however this doesn't just effect Apache 1.3.4. Ready-to-Run software
was notified of this a week ago via their bug reporting system and by
phone.

Noah Robin