[Zope] hard-coded pcgi

Phillip J. Eby pje@telecommunity.com
Thu, 04 Feb 1999 13:31:21 -0500


At 12:52 AM 2/4/99 +0100, Andreas Kostyrka wrote:
>On Wed, 3 Feb 1999, Phillip J. Eby wrote:
>> 
>> The "Rapidsite/Apa" server type is the fourth most popular (by domains
>> served) web server on the 'net, right after vanilla Apache, IIS, and
>> Netscape Enterprise.  Its current market share is about half that of NS
>> Enterprise, with over 86,000 to Netscape's 171,000.  Given that there are
>> no real environment standards for shared hosting with other server types,
>> RS/Apa is arguably *the* dominant shared hosting platform in existence
>> right now, if you consider the platform to be a combination of the server,
>> the installed software, directory structures, hardware configurations, user
>> control panel, etc.

>Actually, it's quite easy to setup with Apache if suexec was included in
>the compilation: It's just one directive in <VirtualHost>, so I'd consider
>Apache as shared as one get :)

Apache's just the server - RS/Apa goes beyond just the server to a whole
host (no pun intended) of provisioning and other resources for shared
hosting.  

>The problem is, that setting su-exec and understanding it's operation (as
>it's extremly security sensitive) is not trivial, so services with lower
>quality standards seem to ignore this configuration.

RS/Apa servers run as root, and set effective uid on every request as soon
as the VirtualHost for the request is known, so suExec configuration is not
an issue, and it provides much more isolation between users.

But anyway, this is all a digression from the subject of Zope, except
insofar as I'd like to see Zope become a part of the RS/Apa standard-issue
toolset/options.  :)