Paul's Journal

If you don’t know what OPIE is, you can likely just stop reading this post now.

Apache Orthrus is a C library and user interfaces for RFC 2289,
“A One-Time Password System (OTP)”, also known as OPIE or S/Key.

SVN: https://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/labs/orthrus/trunk/

If you have ever tried to compile OPIE on OSX, you might understand why I started this, its just painful and full of silly things.

Most of the Apache Software Foundation’s FreeBSD machines use OPIE for our sudo accounts, and I’ve been using SkeyCalc, which was last released as a PPC Binary for 10.1 in 2002.  Right now Apache Orthrus can do the client side of OTP, but I want to finish the project to include a PAM module and full verification support.

Patches welcome though, if anyone else uses OTP out there……

Ground stop in LGA.

In a cramped AA md-80 on the tarmac for a 2 hours so far, next update in an hour. Sigh.
.

The module formally known as mod_wombat was renamed mod_lua, and has pulled into the Apache HTTP Server trunk, and will be part of the future 2.4 stable release.

For an example of why it is cool, lets look at replacing a common task with mod_rewrite: Blocking Image Theft.

The HTTPD wiki even has an example of how to do this for us:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !=""
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !example\.com [NC]
RewriteRule \.(jpe?g|gif|png)$ - [F,NC]

With the new mod_lua, you can do this using real if statements and functions.

For example:

<LuaHookTranslateName imagetheft>
function is_image(path)
    -- You could put complicated regular expressions here.
    if path:match("%a+.png") then
        return true
    end
    return false
end

function imagetheft(r)
    if not is_image(r.uri) then
        return apache2.DECLINED
    end

    referer = r:headers_in("Referer")
    if referer then
        if referer:find('example.com') then
            return apache2.DECLINED
        else
            r:err("Forbidden for Image Theft! uri=".. r.uri)
            return 403
        end
    end
    return apache2.DECLINED
end
</LuaHookTranslateName>

While this example comes out signifigantly longer, I do believe in the long run it will let people write more maintainable configurations, espcially for things like complicated RewriteRules — since basic things that have long be obsecured into RewriteCond can now be easily accessed and evaluated with an If statement in Lua.

Much of the API is still in flux, but hopefully we will come up with some shortcut builtins that make many common taskes easier and shorter.

After using Rhino for server side javascript at work, I can say I somewhat like server side javascript.  Others like Steve were already convinced a long time ago.

However, I don’t really like being tied into the whole Java world because of it.

When Google released their v8 Javascript Engine earlier this year, I always wanted to build an Apache Module for it.

This afternoon I had some time, and so I created mod_v8.

It doesn’t do much beyond a Hello World right now, but it is as simple as this:

ap.write("Hello World!");

I’m not sure if I will spend time making it a proper project, I really want to spend more time on making httpd 2.4 before getting too distracted with shiny things….

My todo list from before thanksgiving:

• Improve the Simple MPM.
• Integrate Lua and mod_wombat into httpd trunk.
• Improve the FastCGI Support in httpd turnk.
• Finish my little infrastructure stats & graphs project.

Well, I did get something working on my Infrastructure Stats Project.  You can see the work in progress here.  It uses flot and jquery to draw graphs of the mail and code commits at the ASF since the Apache Project started in 1996.

I didn’t get around to most of my httpd goals, since every time I work on the Simple MPM, the fact that KQueue causes a kernel panic on OSX kinda discourages me.  I was hoping that the latest kernels from Apple would fix the problem, but they don’t.

I did manage to commit 4 new modules to httpd trunk however:

• mod_heartbeat – Generates Multicast heartbeat messages containing the status of the server.
• mod_heartmonitor – Collects these Multicast heartbeats for other modules to use.
• mod_ratelimit – Bandwidth Rate Limiting for Clients.
• mod_lbmethod_heartbeat – Module to Load Balance mod_proxy_balancer workers using the data from the heartbeats.

mod_heartbeat, mod_heartmonitor, and mod_ratelimit were all originally written at Joost, and my employer was nice enough to let us contribute them back to Apache.

I’ve also announced the intent to roll the first 2.3.0-alpha release next weekend.  Hopefully this means within a few months, a new stable 2.4.x branch will come out.

Yesterday, Apple approved the Joost Application for the IPhone.

Apple Store Link.

The Joost Application is something I helped prototype, and wrote most of the server side support, although I was busy with other things and haven’t worked on it recently, and I’m glad it is now released to the public.

It isn’t perfect, as some of the reviews have said, we are doing our best with the APIs that Apple provides, but the Video Player has some pretty big bugs we do our best to work around, but I hope Apple significantly improves MPMoviePlayerController with another firmware release.

Radar Bugs: (what are rdar links?)

• 6352281 – Problems with the Headphone getting inserted causing video to pause
• 6299534 – Problems with the Next Button on the default Apple UI.
• 5888718 – Video player does not detect when it is upside down.
• 6407138 – Audio Sync Issues

(open source) things to do over thanksgiving weekend:

• Improve the Simple MPM.
• Integrate Lua and mod_wombat into httpd trunk.
• Improve the FastCGI Support in httpd turnk.
• Finish my little infrastructure stats & graphs project.

I’ll be happy if I make progress on any one of them…..

Star Trek: The Original Series – The Ultimate Computer:

Yay!

I’m on a new feathercast episode talking about Apache 3.0.

ps, New Orleans and ApacheCon is fun.

pss. Last day is Today.

I installed the wprdpress iPhone app while on a train.

It told me that my WP version was too old, so using pterm I sshed into my server, and upgraded from 2.3 to 2.6.

And now I’m writing a blog post on my iPhone.

The iphone is not perfect, but nothing else is even close.

Earlier this week, I committed a new ‘Simple’ MPM to Apache httpd trunk.

More info on the mailing lists.

I should write more about the Simple MPM, but ApacheCon New Orleans is  coming up next week, so I want to try to get more of the code in before then, since traditionally coding during the conference never works out, and I’ll try to write up a blog post about why its cool sometime next week during the conference.

Apache HTTP Server 2.2.10 was released more than a week ago.

One of the new features I don’t think anyone has mentioned much is that we now have built in support for chroot.  Just add ChrootDir “/srv/my_root”, and all IO in Apache after the initial startup will be inside the chroot.

I don’t often write about politics, or anything related to it, on my journal.

However, the SEVEN HUNDRED BILLION DOLLAR buyout deal that Henry Paulson, the Secretary of the United States Treasury, is trying to get done, is insane.

This isn’t Capitalism.

If I didn’t believe in Capitalism, I wouldn’t be working at a startup.

If Joost fails, I don’t expect anyone to help me.  I expect it to hurt. But it is my risk to take, why do giant financial companies, who have done apparently stupid things, get treated differently?

If Joost is successful, I expect rewards, and this is the basis of any capitalistic system,  but these buyouts are creating a system in which stupid companies can do badly — and their employees still get rewarded.

I didn’t live during the Great Depression.  I don’t know how bad it can get. I have lived an ‘easy’ life in modern America.

But I would rather see another depression than this massive buyout.

Whatever is going on, it is not capitalism, and I am sad to see America going in this direction.