W3C MiniServ BUG

Known Bugs in W3C Mini Server

The list of known bugs are in reverse chronological order. Please report bugs or bug fixes to libwww@w3.org noting the version of the Mini Server and the Library and what caused the bug to appear.
	./webd -version
The provided patches are relative to the WWW directory in the distribution tree. In order to apply a patch, do the following in the WWW directory:
  1. Download the patch, for example webd-1.fix
  2. Invoke the patch command by typing
    	patch < webd-1.fix
    
  3. Rebuild the code by typing
    	make clobber
    	./BUILD webd
    
You should only apply patches under the section with same version number as your current version. You can see the current version of this software by looking into the version file. Please also make sure that this version is the same as for the version of the W3C Reference Library


Mini Server 4.0D

Event Loop and Timeouts
The current implementation of the server has a problem with requests that timeout. That is, if the remote server is not capable of generating a response within the amount of time the server is willing to wait. The server is not capable of finding which request object timed out so it has to stop the search completely. This is a limitatation of the current implementation of the internal Event loop in the Library. It is not a design limitation, but the event loop is currently optimized for use by user active applications and not so much "non-user" application.
DNS lookup
The current DNS resolution uses the standard getXbyY system calls. However, as they traditionally are implemented using blocking sockets, the server may block as we only have a single process and a single stack. The solution is of course to have a non-blocking DNS resolver library.


Henrik Frystyk, libwww@w3.org, November 1995