In January 2005, I was on a quest to find a webserver that ran on Windows (and wasn't IIS) and supported:

  • virtual hosts
  • mod_perl
  • mod_rewrite
  • reverse proxy

I tried many of the servers below, and finally settled on Apache, despite the admonitions you will see saying that a "real" Apache web server can't run under Windows. The only disadvantage I have found so far is that the GUI admin tools for Apache (like Webmin) are Unix-only. However, I am now intimately familiar with the contents of my "conf" files, and I suspect that means I understand Apache better, and I know exactly what permissions are enabled ... basically as few as lets the server run!

The comments below are a mixture of mine and the marketing hype you can find on the linked pages.


comments have been disabled

Patrick Ogay?July 30, 2005, at 06:26 AM

> The only disadvantage I have found so far is that the GUI admin tools for Apache
> (like Webmin) are Unix-only.
You can easily run a linuxserver on top of Windows.
I use the Debian image of coLinux. It's a minimal installation, where you can install Apache and all packages you need with apt-get from internet.

I love it.
I even can access now the server from outside.

Advantage of `coLinux (and virtualisation in general)

  • no need for a separate Linux box
  • many installations on on computer
  • the image is not dependent of the host installation, it's possible to use an existing linux installation to run under coLinux.
  • in general (IMHO) virtual systems are easier to backup (live migration under Xen)

to play with: PVPM (portable virtual privacy machine) http://www.metropipe.net/ProductsPVPM.shtml nice as "Linux pocket pc" on USB-Stick, starts from Win or Linux (under qemu)

Patrick Ogay

it's also a test of pmwiki Comment:-)

Neil HerberJuly 30, 2005, at 12:56 PM

Hi Patrick

Colinux is something that escaped me when I was looking for a webserver platform. It looks very interesting. Thanks for the link.

it looks like pmwiki Comment works! :-)

Russel Olinger?08 January 2008, 18:58

I know this article is quite old, but it gave me hope that the author had found a way to get mod_perl and mod_rewrite to work with Xitami. I have searched the internet over trying to find a way, and though I have not yet succeeded in finding a way to do - I also haven't found any info that indicates it can't be done.

Can anyone post on how to do it xitami or point in the right direction on how to do it. I can be reached at: rolinger1 (at) hotmail (.) com

Neil Herber08 January 2008, 21:44

Hi Russel

I never went back to Xitami because I have been able to do everything I need with Apache, and there is a huge amount of support for it.

I have, however, used several copies of XAMPP for testing and demonstrations. I actually can run it from a (fast) USB stick on almost any host Windows PC. That really impresses people to see a server running on their own machine in only a few minutes.

In one demo I ran Apache, PmWiki, WordPress, and SMF from the stick.

Russel Olinger?08 January 2008, 23:24

yeah...I have heard about servers on stick before. Pretty neat idea for demos I suppose.

I have since learned that mod_perl and mod_rewrite are for Apache interaction only. If they can work with Xitami I haven't seen any documentation or examples or feedback from others that indicates how it can work with Xitami.

My inquiry about mod_perl, mod_rewrite is to convert dynamic urls to static urls to make my searchable content more friendly to search engine crawlers. I "think" I have found way using webserver aliases.

alias path /foo = /cgi-bin/foo.pl

Then have the URL: /foo/var1_10/var2_20/var3_30 OR /foo/10/20/30

The alias kicks off the /cgi-bin/foo.pl script, which reads the $PATH_INFO environment variable to parse out the variables needed within the script

($root,$path) = split(/\/foo\//,$ENV{'PATH_INFO'}/ ; @getVars = split(/\//,$path) ;

print $getVars ;

"var1_10 var2_20 var3_30" or "10 20 30"

Well, thats the theory at least...I don't know if there is a cleaner way to do it...I hope there is because the problem with the above is that I need to manually configure all the aliases within the server config. I am looking for an easier method that would allow me to create what I needed on the fly - but not certain how. As I said before mod_perl and mod_rewrite are apache only modules (at least I think they are) and I aim to keep using Xitami - so I need to get creative.

Thus far, the problem with the above alias method is that Xitami, from what I gather, can only alias to a directory...not to a specific file. So I would need to put an index.pl in the alias folder instead of directly to the script.

/foo = /cgi-bin/foo/

And then have index.pl be the default executable script.

This is all very convoluted.

Any thoughts or suggestions?

Russel Olinger?09 January 2008, 02:27

Ha...the above technique actually works. By using Xitami's CGI Alias feature you can match a root alias name to any script

/foo = /xitami/cgi-bin/foo.pl

And URL www.bar.com/foo/hello/how/are/you

would get forwarded to foo.pl, and PATH_INFO is everything after foo -> /hello/how/are/you - then you can parse that path info and waa-laa, you have your dynamic variables back.

Oooh, I am very excited now. Now I can make all 700,000 pages of my site be crawler friendly!!!

Mary?27 April 2013, 11:34

Thank you for another inrifmatove web site. Where else could I get that type of information written in such an ideal way? I've a project that I am just now working on, and I've been on the look out for such information.

Russel Olinger?12 December 2013, 12:31

Mary: there are lots of comments here...what specifically was informative and what else exactly are you looking for?

NeilHerber12 December 2013, 12:57

Russel: Based on past experience, Mary is a spambot, or a human spammer trolling for sites where they can post spam.


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