2.1. What is Caudium?

Caudium is a Web server based on a fork of the Roxen Challenger 1.3 WebServer. Like Roxen, Caudium is written in Pike with parts written in C for performance reasons. Pike is an interpreted language developed by Frederik Hübinette and Roxen Internet Software (RIS), a Swedish company which also created the Roxen Web Server. Caudium, like Pike, is distributed under the terms of the GPL license; several companies and people are involved in its development.

Caudium features include:

• Single-process architecture.

• Optional multi-threaded mode.

• Backwards compatible with Roxen 1.3 on the API and RXML level.

• Runs on many Unix-like systems (GNU/Linux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, Solaris, AIX, Darwin/MacOS X).

• Web based interface for easy administration.

• Built in SSL capabilities. Enabling SSL on Caudium is as easy as filing a web form.

• Written in Pike. Unlike most web servers, you don't need to learn C or C++ and those pesky details like memory allocation to enhance the server's capabilities.

• Extensible with custom modules.

• Powerful API.

• Lots of standard modules distributed with the server, including an FTP server, the CAMAS web mail application, and the UltraLog log analysis tool. The "module" directory in Caudium 1.2 with CAMAS contains 192 code-only files. Most of the modules are in a single file.

• RXML language. RXML stands for Roxen eXtensible Markup Language and is a set of tags, containers and simple programming language constructs that you put in your HTML source. Those tags and containers will be interpreted at run-time by Caudium. This allows non-programmers to do development.

• XML language. Using Sablotron, Caudium can render XML pages processed with XSLT, DOM and XPath. You can find more information on Sablotron on http://www.gingerall.com/. It allows you to use pages designed for Apache mod_xslt in Caudium without modifications. Also the output of these generated pages can also be parsed by our RXML parser before sending the result to the client.

2.2. Caudium vs Roxen: Why a fork?

Caudium is backward compatible with Roxen Challenger 1.3. It has all the Roxen 1.3 RXML tags and the Roxen 1.3 API, so, from a technical point of view, it is quite the same (although Caudium has many improvements over Roxen 1.3). The main legal difference between Roxen 1.3 and Caudium is that Roxen is property of Roxen Internet Software whereas Caudium is owned by its developers, The Caudium Group. There are many functional extensions, improvements and bug fixes over the original Roxen 1.3 code base from which Caudium was created. Here you may say it is not a problem since it is under GPL. The problem is that even it is licensed under the GPL, RIS may not include your patch in its CVS tree, you may not have a CVS account, so you can't really do all you want. The main reason for the fork, however, was that RIS didn't pay attention to the users' needs, and proceeded to make the new versions of the Roxen Web Server largely incompatible with the previous versions, to the point where one couldn't switch to the new version of the software without much effort put into conversion of the old source code. Rewriting huge portions of RXML/Pike code just to switch to a new version of the web server seemed to be quite counter-productive, and thus the Caudium Project was born.

2.3. Comparing Caudium with Apache

Caudium differs from Apache in many ways including the directory structure, programming language, and type of configuration. Caudium has a fully integrated web interface, while Apache relies on editing text files directly. Moreover, any change to the Apache configuration requires a restart of the server, while Caudium sees the changes immediately after you save them from the web interface. There are also some differences in the vocabulary used in the configuration interface. Another difference is that Apache 1.3 uses a forked process model while Caudium uses threads or a monolithic process model, depending on the features present in the copy of Pike it uses. Caudium allows the programmer/user to easily extend the server using modules/scripts written in Pike that integrate tightly with the core server and, thus, create a more robust, faster and more intuitive entity than an Apache server augmented with a set of external dynamically loadable libraries. While changing anything in the source code of any Apache extension (or the server itself) requires recompilation, relinking and restarting of the whole server, Caudium allows one to add/remove/modify code without any interruption of the server operation. If you modify a module all you need to do to see the effects of your work is to reload the module in question using the configuration interface. Caudium's architecture also provides easy means of building highly dynamic web pages that use SQL, gdbm, Mird databases, LDAP, dynamically generated graphics (including business graphics modules) and more. The same effect can be achieved with Apache almost only by using external set of Perl, Python, or other language, scripts running as CGI or embedded using a dynamically loaded module. While allowing the programmer/designer to use CGI modules, Caudium offers more power when the source code is integrated with the Caudium core.

2.4. Advantages of Caudium

• Stable multi-threaded programming (Roxen has been multi-threaded since 1994).

• Mostly written in an interpreted, object-oriented, language - Pike:

  • Easy to program and extend. Just imagine if you could code extensions to the Apache core in PHP or Perl.

  • No buffer overflows, segmentation faults or any other problems of that nature.

  • RealNetworks is still using Roxen 1.3 as their main web platform for its stability and speed.

• Low level API available for end-users.

• RXML tags.

• Lots of modules.

• Backwards compatible with Roxen 1.3.

• Different. If you are a Linux or BSD user for some time you already know the most used is not always the best.

• Caudium won't run under win32 (thus letting us more time for useful things). However some people are trying to port it using cygwin without code modification.

• Embedded PHP4 support.

2.5. Disadvantages of Caudium

• Too small of a community, and quite unknown in web server world. One example of the problem you may have is if you write Pike code for Caudium, and your hosting company doesn't support Pike, and you don't have root access to your server. Of course, it is possible to compile Pike on your account and run Caudium without the superuser privileges.

• RIS (Roxen Internet Software) owns Pike, but this is likely to change in the not-so-distant future.

• Needs more testing for exotic modules or modules we don't use often. Example of such modules include htaccess support.

• Too little documentation. One example is the lack of documentation about FastCGI support.

• CGI performance on busy CGI based sites was lackluster -- no one will take the time to rewrite CGIs. This seems to be somewhat resolved with Pike 7.2/Caudium 1.2.

• It is sometimes impossible to get some features when you are a normal user because configuration is only accessible with the CIF. (Configuration InterFace). And the CIF. is accessible only by the admin (this is being taken care of in the development series of the server). Here is list of day to day problems submitted by Chris Davies:

  Webmasters like to use mod_rewrite in the .htaccess files to protect their sites from leeching, etc. Yes, there is referrerdeny and browserdeny, but these are accessible to the System Administrator, not the casual web user. On Apache, one can easily specify rules on a per directory basis. This isn't easy in Caudium, however, it is rare that someone would have more than two or three different conditions.

  Now, for people that are running their own server, many of these issues disappear. Administration and adding servers is much easier. I'm not sure I agree with the templates, but perhaps an Apache Template could be tweaking beyond that to the System Administrator. In most cases, Apache has SSI turned on for shtml files -- getting the exec command enabled to mimic this in Caudium is not a task for the beginner. The maze of options to find that one setting will certainly frustrate anyone getting started.

• A graphical interface is not always the best. To create a virtual server with Apache, you have to copy and paste five lines. If you use the Caudium Interface it will take you more than one minute. And if you want to change Caudium text file directly, you will have to write sed script.

3.1. How to get packages for Debian GNU/Linux

In Debian GNU/Linux Woody, also known as Debian 3.0, Caudium and Pike 7.0 and 7.2 are included in the distribution. If you use Woody, you will have Caudium 1.0 and Pike 7.0/7.2. If you use Sid you will have the latest Caudium and the latest Pike; these two packages are actively maintained by the Caudium community, and you will have frequent updates. If you want to test the latest Caudium under Woody, add this to your /etc/apt/sources.list:

deb http://grendel.firewall.com/debian/caudium/1.2 unstable main

This location is mirrored in other locations, so you can also use:

deb http://ftp.oav.net/caudium unstable main deb ftp://ftp.oav.net/caudium unstable main

If you want php4 Debian package for Caudium, you can do:

# su - # apt-get update # apt-get install -f caudium caudium-modules \ caudium-ultralog caudium-pixsl caudium-dev

And then grab the PHP4 sources:

# exit $ cd /usr/src; apt-get source -d php4; apt-get build-dep php4

If you don't have devscripts and debhelper installed, install them now. Then enter the /usr/src/php-4* directory and do:

$ debuild binary

After some time and some coffee you should have php4 packages for Apache, CGI and your fresh Caudium.

3.2. How to get packages for FreeBSD

Caudium 1.0 and Pike 7.0 are in the official FreeBSD ports. There are also available as a binary package in the FreeBSD 4.7 CDROMs.

Caudium 1.2 and Pike 7.2 are available as ports tarballs at ftp://ftp.oav.net/pkg_freebsd/ports.tar.gz. If you take the latest ports from this site use the following command: $ cd /tmp $ fetch ftp://ftp.oav.net/pkg_freebsd/ports.tar.gz Receiving ports.tar.gz (32468 bytes): 100% 32468 bytes transferred in 0.6 seconds (53.87 kBps) $ su - # cd /usr/ # tar xzf /tmp/ports.tar.gz Another note, since Caudium and Pike have been added recently to FreeBSD port tree, you must have an up to date port tree. See the FreeBSD handbook at http://www.freebsd.org/handbook/cvsup.html about cvsup handling.

As root, go to /usr/ports/www/caudium10 to install current stable version, /usr/ports/www/caudium12 to install the next stable version in Release Candidate process, or /usr/ports/www/caudium-dev to install the current developer's version. The script will automatically fetch and install Pike, try to detect what library you've installed and compile all the necessary libs for Caudium and Pike.

Here is the current Pike / Caudium options supported by the current port :

• WITH_MOST : Install the FreeType1 and FreeType2 support.

• WITH_OPTIMIZED_CFLAGS : Add some performance flags to the compiler.

• WITH_TTF : Install the FreeType1 support.

• WITH_FREETYPE : Install the FreeType2 support.

• WITH_MYSQL : Install the MySQL support.

• WITH_POSTGRES : Install the PostgreSQL support.

• WITH_MSQL : Install mSQL support.

• WITH_UNIXODBC : Install UnixODBC support (incompatible option with WITH_IODBC).

• WITH_IODBC : Install iODBC support (incompatible option with WITH_UNIXODBC).

• WITH_SANE : Install SANE backend.

• WITH_PDF : Install PDF support

• WITH_MESA/HAVE_MESA : Install MesaGL support.

• HAVE_GNOME/WANT_GNOME : Install GNOME support.

3.3. How to get packages for Solaris

Bill Welliver has made some packages. They are available on Riverweb and mirrored to Oav.net.

3.4. How to get CAMAS from CVS/source

To get CAMAS from the CVS, go to the CAMAS web site and follow the link.

4.1. Installing Caudium from sources

You need to install Pike before you can install Caudium. The version of Pike is different depending on the Caudium version you want to install. For Caudium 1.0, use Pike 7.0; for Caudium 1.2, use Pike 7.2. You can find some Pike packages for the most popular systems: Debian GNU/Linux (Woody/Sid), FreeBSD, Solaris.

To take a CVS source snapshot of Pike 7.2+, you will need to have a preinstalled Pike (any version) on your system in order to compile the fresh CVS checkout. This is because the CVS sources need to pre-process certain parts of the sources with some special Pike scripts. Downloading a tarball from the RIS site (always outdated) will free you from the requirement of having the Pike installed before compiling the CVS snapshot.

For more information, see the quick start guide at http://caudium.net/.

4.2. Starting

The first time you install Caudium from the sources, you will need to type the following commands:

# su -
# cd /usr/local/caudium
# ./install
    

This script will allow you to give login information for the Configuration InterFace (CIF.), the web based configuration interface, and the port address for the CIF.. But if you want to start Caudium manually, you don't need to use install, just use the start script. This script will fork Caudium once and restart it automatically if it dies. A consequence is that if you kill start, the server will always be running but it will not restart if it dies.

There are many useful options to start. The first is --help. Here is a non-exhaustive list of options:

• --once: Do not fork Caudium and output debug to stdout (screen). If you hit CTRL-C, Caudium will be killed

• -t: Display all Pike calls

• --gdb: Run Caudium inside gdb, useful only for developers.

• --with-threads: Run Caudium with threads (run better on *BSD and Solaris)

• --without-threads: The opposite of --with-threads. It doesn't mean that the Pike scripts/modules aren't able to use threads. It merely means that the Caudium core server will not use threaded handler backend.

• --with-keep-alive: Enable keep-alive in HTTP. In the old days of the web, the HTTP protocol was simple but not efficient: one connection was made for each objects requested by a client. That means a web browser made 20 connections to the webserver if there was 19 images on a webpage and the HTML page itself. This result in a lot of overhead and response time delay. With keep alive, the server don't close the connection for each objects so the browser can request several objects with one HTTP connection and does not need to reconnect each time. As a result, the website seems to be faster for the client and the webserver can handle more users.

  Currently, the keep-alive option doesn't work with CAMAS (I use CAMAS-1.1.7-DEV, Caudium 1.2RC1). Generally speaking, it is also not ready for production use. Here is a comment from Xavier Beaudouin: keep-alive is somewhat buggy on Caudium. My test shows that high number of connections on keep-alived Caudium show some random dropped returns. I do not recommend using keep-alive. If you'd like keep-alive a "black box" like redline seems the best solution... but expensive.

• --config-dir=DIR: Allows you to specify where your configuration files are, where "DIR" is the name of the directory holding the configuration files (typically /usr/local/caudium/configurations/). This is a very useful option. For example you can start several Caudium instances with different configurations by using different configuration directories. This is also useful if you put the configuration files in a non-standard directory: /usr/local/caudium/server/start --config-dir=/home/david/etc/my_caudium_configuration/ For Apache users, this is the equivalent of the -f option but points to the directory that contains the files.

Finally, the most important thing is debug log files. These files are stored in ../logs/debug (relative to /usr/local/caudium/server in our example). The current log file is named default.1. The log file from the last Caudium start is default.2 and so on. If you didn't enable debug, these files are always used but contain very few messages.

The location of files may be different on your system if you are using a prepackaged version of the software.

4.3. Stopping from command line

There are two ways to stop Caudium:

• Kill Caudium with a -9 signal. If you do this Caudium will restart. Actually it will be restarted by the start script.

• Kill Caudium (with kill(1)'s default TERM signal) . In this case, Caudium will stop cleanly. If you use Caudium 1.2 and later, you can use the caudiumctl command. A man page for caudiumctl should be available on your system.

In both cases Caudium will stop only after a few moments.

On Debian GNU/Linux, you can use the following commands to manipulate the server status:

# /etc/init.d/caudium stop # /etc/init.d/caudium start # /etc/init.d/caudium restart

4.4. Directory organization

• configurations:

  Contains the config files used by the CIF.. These files use the XML syntax. You don't have to modify them by hand. If for some reason you do, make sure to do it when Caudium is stopped because they will get overwritten with the server's current configuration when the server is stopped. An alternate method is to edit the file, then send the HUP signal to the Caudium process. Another method is to use the CIF.: Go into Action -> Maintenance -> Reload configurations from disk. This will cause Caudium to reload its configuration from disk. As you may have guessed, each file has the name of the corresponding virtual server. One file however has a special name - Global_Variables. This file contains information about Caudium's global variables (See the Global Variables tab in the CIF.).

• logs:

  Contains useful information such as debug log, virtual server logs, start/stop status. See also Section 4.2.

• readme:

  It's all in the name.

• server:

  This directory contains the actual server.

  • base_server:

    Contains the server core Pike code: API, CIF., etc. Newbies should not modify these files.

  • bin:

    First binary code that is run when you use the start script. There are also some Pike scripts running as CGIs and without Caudium API.

  • caudium-images:

    This directory contains Caudium static images from the Caudium Group, such as the "powered by" series.

  • config_actions:

    These are files used in the Action tab on the CIF.. You may use some of these functions in your code.

  • etc:

    Caudium includes files used by the Caudium core and its modules. For example, it contains .html files for error messages. Two directories are important for a module developer:

    • include:

      Put your .h files here.

    • module:

      Put your module files here (.pmod). Pike module files are used to provide two-level functions/class/methods for your modules. When you modify any of these files, you must restart the server.

  • fonts:

    Contains some compatibility fonts with some older versions. The new directory is nfonts.

  • languages:

    Some basic language translations for time/date.

  • lib:

    Some of the C code used to speed Caudium up. This code is a set of dynamic libraries (.so).

  • modules:

    Contains Caudium modules. These are all the modules you see when you click Add Module after you have selected one of your servers in the CIF.. Browsing this directory will be useful to understand Caudium.

    • 3rdparty:

      This special directory contains third party modules for Caudium. These may be useful but are provided without any warranty and will not be maintained by the Caudium Group but they may be by the individuals who wrote them.

  • more_modules:

    Some modules that meet a specific need, are not up-to-date, or are humorous.

  • nfonts:

    Fonts for graphical things like <gtext> and <gbutton>. You can have several types of properties like bold or italic for the same font name.

  • Perl:

    Needed to run Perl scripts within Caudium. At the time of writing this document, Perl support is broken, and we will be pleased to get help on this issue.

  • protocols:

    Contains protocol modules (for handling HTTP, FTP and the like).

  • server_templates:

    The templates you can choose from when you create a new a virtual server.

  • unfinished_modules:

    For modules in development.

You can also see readme/README relative to /usr/local/caudium in our example.

4.5. Upgrading Caudium

Upgrading Caudium is simple. You should install it as if for the first time. That is, get the new sources, unpack them, run ./configure; make; make install and that's all. The new Caudium installation will detect your old Caudium and keep all your old installation including your config files. The config files will be compatible with the new version so you will never have to begin the configuration task a second time. The old server directory will be saved as server.old and so the new one will be put in the classical server directory.

If you use a package system, just use the upgrading features of your packaging system.

4.6. Configuration InterFace (CIF.)

The CIF. is where the administrator manages the server. When you first login it looks like this.

In the CIF, you'll find four tabs:

1. 

   The server(s) you have created in this Caudium installation. This is where you will tune each server configuration.

2. 

   The configuration variables that affect Caudium as a whole, including all virtual servers.

3. 

   The log file output as a nice looking log. Note however, that neither errors nor startup events are displayed in the event log. This means developers should always look in the plain log file.

4. 

   Some actions you may take on you servers such as shutting down Caudium or generating an SSL certificate. This allows you to avoid some of the command line stuff.

As the CIF. is quite easy to cope with, I will try to describe some of the hidden things you may need to know about. One of them is the button. This button is very useful. Furthermore, some Basic options will not be available unless you turn it on. With this option, you will have more control over Global Variables and some modules in Virtual Servers.

One of these controls is the button that you will have when you are in a module. This button will allow developers to check the new code of their modules without restarting Caudium. You should also know that very few options in some modules will not be activated unless you reload the module. So always reload a module when you think an option has not been read by Caudium.

4.7. Adding your first server

In this section, I will give you a step-by-step tutorial on how to create your first site (virtual server) with Caudium. If you want to do something useful with Caudium, you have to create at least one virtual server. Without this first server, Caudium will not do anything. If you use your browser to access your server, you will only get a dialog box prompting for the CIF. login/password.

A virtual server allows you to have several servers running on the same port. For example you can have www.foo.com and www.foo.org running on the same port and machine. This is why it is called virtual server.

To create your first server, log into the web based CIF.. Click on the Virtual Servers tab, then the button.

Here, you are prompted for the server name:

---

4.7.1. Server variables

Now you'll see the Virtual Servers page again. As you can see, you have two different folders to work on: Server variables (Figure 4-1) and File system (Figure 4-2).

Figure 4-1. Ports in the CIF

Figure 4-2. Filesystem in the CIF

Server variables contain the URL of your site, and the port on which it will be available. File system describes the files/directories containing the .html and other files you want Caudium to serve.

In server variables, go into Listen ports and choose Configure a new port. Use the default values, choose Use these values, and click . Now select the URL of your site, and select Continue. You can now go back to the page displaying all of your modules, that is, where you were before you had gone into Server Variables.

Under your server name, you'll see the status of your server. If it contains the word "Open" in blue everything is okay, and you can continue with configuring the file system.

If it contains the words "Not open" in red, there is a problem. You can go into the Event Log via the CIF. tab to investigate. If you have an error Failed to open socket on 0:80 (already bound ?), you may have another program or Caudium itself already running on this port. To fix the problem, identify the program which is using this port, and restart Caudium [1]. To restart Caudium, go into Action->Shutdown->Shutdown Caudium->Restart Caudium. Wait a few seconds, and when prompted, select Virtual Servers. Now select your server, and you should have the word "Open" in blue.

	In the CIF. you may wonder what are those two different protocols http and http2?
	The difference is that http2 uses Caudium's internal memory cache while http is plain Pike http subsystem. So http2 is faster than http as you might expect. However, there are some issues on some specific sites.

---

4.7.2. Selecting file system

By selecting a file system, you tell Caudium which files it will send to people browsing your site. For those who know other web servers, please pay close attention to these explanations, because Caudium is quite different from other servers in this respect.

Caudium file systems use the Unix philosophy of mount point, rather than c:, d:, and so forth. The mount point concept allows you to put your files/directory under any URL you want without changing the files on your local file system. For example, assume you have the following local file system:

Example 4-1. Your user filesystem.

/home/customers/customer1 /home/customers/customer2 /home/customers/bigcustomer3 /home/friends/franck /home/friends/bertrand /home/friends/didier

And suppose your URL is http://www.iteam.org/.

With a default configuration, you would say that http://www.iteam.org points to /home/ so that you will have customer1 under http://www.iteam.org/customers/customer1, bertrand under http://www.iteam.org/friends/bertrand and bigcustomer3 under http://www.iteam.org/customers/bigcustomer3.

But bigcustomer3 gives you a lot of money and he asks you for an URL such as http://www.iteam.org/bigcustomer3. However, he doesn't want to be moved from /home/customers/bigcustomer3 because of his FTP client's configuration. Moreover, you can't move the other accounts. With the mount point philosophy, you just have to create another mount point saying that /home/customers/bigcustomer3 is mounted on /bigcustomer3 so that when someone uses http://www.iteam.org/bigcustomer3, Caudium will serve them files from /home/customers/bigcustomer3.

Now let's return to our setup. Go into the File System module, and select NONE/ mounted on / -> Path -> Search Path. Here you will decide which of your directories will be available when someone hits the root of your server. Write, for example, /home.

You can now launch your favorite browser to the URL of your site and enjoy.

If you don't want visitors to get a listing of your files for security reasons, you can disable listing by setting Directory Settings -> Enable directory listing per default to No. Next you have to hit the More options button, and then reload the module. Don't forget to click Save. It is possible to put one of two "magic files" in any directory to make it browsable/not browsable despite the setting in the CIF. for that particular file system:

.www_browsable - the directory will always be browsable .www_not_browsable - the directory will never be browsable

Finally, to allow bigcustomer3 to get to his URL, go to File System -> Copy Module. Next, go to Path -> Search Path and type /home/customers/bigcustomer3, then type /bigcustomer3 in Mount point.

The Figure 4-3 shows the output you should have.

Figure 4-3. Example of output

If you created these files/directories after you point Caudium to your site, it is safe to go in the Actions tab, then to Cache -> Cache status -> Flush caches.

www\.virtualhost\.com	www.virtualhost.com
         

^www\.virtualhost\.com$|^virtualhost\.com$ www.virtualhost.com
        

# echo "127.0.0.1   www.virtualhost.com" >> /etc/hosts.
      

5.1. How to run Caudium as a non-privileged user; How to secure Caudium

Web servers are usually publicly accessible and represent your company, group or entity so there are chances you want to strengthen the security of this service.

As I already mentioned Caudium has a good security for public access behind mostly written in a script language. However Caudium runs as root by default. In the case a non-authorized user gains access to Caudium's process, he might gain root privileges. Consequently,a lot of web servers run as another user with minimal privileges. Doing this may require some work, as you will have to change the owner of all the files Caudium needs access to, so I give step-by-step instructions how to change those permissions:

1. Find a good user name. This user name should be a normal user with the least privileges. Lots of distributions already have a special account for this. Common names include "www", "www-data", "httpd", "nobody" (Caudium on Debian GNU/Linux runs as www-data:www-data by default). We don't recommend "nobody" though; to quote Theo de Raadt:

   The user "nobody" has historically been doing too much. If you could break into the user "nobody", you could cause great damage.

2. Change the owner of the files which Caudium needs to write to. These include:

   • Caudium internal log file (default.*).

   • Per virtual server log file.

   • All caches.

   • The configurations files (they are written by the CIF.).

   On a Caudium source install the following command should do the job:

   # chown -R www-data.www-data logs/ var/ argument_cache/ bgcache/ configurations/ server/*.pem server

   Here is the result:

   $ ls -l total 32 drwxr-sr-x 6 www-data www-data 4096 Feb 13 23:17 argument_cache drwxr-sr-x 2 www-data www-data 4096 Feb 19 09:27 bgcache drwxr-sr-x 2 www-data www-data 4096 Mar 4 22:28 configurations drwxr-sr-x 4 root staff 4096 Feb 13 23:16 local drwxr-sr-x 7 www-data www-data 4096 Mar 3 11:50 logs drwxr-sr-x 2 root staff 4096 Feb 13 23:16 readme drwxr-sr-x 19 www-data www-data 4096 Feb 19 20:13 server drwxr-sr-x 2 www-data www-data 4096 Mar 3 19:28 var $ id www-data uid=33(www-data) gid=33(www-data) groups=33(www-data)

   If users are allowed to log on the server, you might also change the permissions of the logs directory.

   If you have a Caudium specific distribution for your system (such as Debian GNU/Linux) check manually.

3. Don't forget to change the permissions of any script/directory you made and for which Caudium needs to write to in your public filesystem.

4. Log into the CIF., go in the main Global variables tab, then in Change uid and gid type the uid:gid data you choose. We typed 33:33 in our example. You can also type a login name and group name: www-data:www-data. You can also enable the Change uid and gid permanently option but be sure to read the documentation first.

I will now speak about general security measures you can take if you are very strict about security.

1. Don't allow users to execute scripts that are part of the server.

   As Caudium is a single process server, it is possible to stop it, restart it, access it, etc. with a user script. This include pike scripts, pike tag, and PHP modules for Caudium.

   If you do want to let your users run scripts, you can always use CGI, or better uniscript (in this case it will be transparent to the user), in order to run a script in a separate process using the fork(2) system call. This will decrease the performance of Caudium but the security has a price, and it is up to you to decide how much you want to pay.

   Uniscript is a CGI-like wrapper. It will execute programs as if they were CGI scripts but unlike CGI, it does not require you to put these programs under a specific directory like /cgi-bin/. For example each user can have his or her CGI script in his or her directory. Moreover Caudium can execute them with the uid of the owner.

2. Don't use anything you don't need. Remove any modules you don't need in your virtual server.

3. Physically restrict access to the CIF.. Don't access it from the Internet if possible. Few people know this, but it is now possible to see SSL connections in clear text with a man-in-the-middle attack. The dsniff software contains all the tools and explanation for this.

4. Turn off these options:

   • Global Variables -> show_internals.

   • Global Variables -> Version numbers -> Show Caudium Version Number.

   • Global Variables -> Version numbers -> Show Pike Version Number.

   Turn off any debug options specific to a module. These options are for developers, and they don't have security in mind when they debug output.

   	Actually, this is security through obscurity and doesn't increase the security of the server.
   --Grendel

5. Output Caudium's log files to a separate partition. /var is a good choice for that purpose.

6. Check the Caudium web site for patches.

7. If your job relies on your web server security, check the Caudium source.

5.2. How to benchmark a web server

First, benchmarking a web server is not an easy thing. To benchmark a web server the time it will take to give a page is not important: you don't care if a user can have his page in 0.1 ms or in 0.05 ms as nobody can have such delays on the Internet.

What is important is the average time it will take when you have a maximum number of users on your site simultaneously. Another important thing is how much more time it will take when there are 2 times more users: a server that take 2 times more for 2 times more users is better than another that take 4 times more for the same amount of users. If you run more than a web server on your computer, you will also want to look at the load average and CPU time of your system. Here is a typical output of the command uptime:

22:39:49 up 2:22, 5 users, load average: 0.01, 0.01, 0.00

And an extract from the top(1) man page:

" The load averages are the average number of process ready to run during the last 1, 5 and 15 minutes "

So the lower your load average is, the better for the other programs on your machine.

Now comes the next problem: how can you stress your web server with a maximum number of connections when your client (the machine making the request) will usually not be able to cope with the server and with the number of users you have.

To do this, increase the number of sockets you can have on your system. Under some systems it is 1024, which is too low, see Section 5.3 for more information. The next thing to do is to have a good client program written with threads and non-blocking sockets. If you use a multi-fork program on a single client, it will never cope with any web server. It is also good to have several clients stressing the server together.

Last, if you want to compare two web servers, be sure that they are on the same hardware, OS, and network. The same holds for the client(s).

5.3. How to tune your system for best Caudium performances

5.3.1. Linux

Until a Linux guru has time to make some nice documentation, here is something that came from PureFtpd software :

o Increase your system max descriptors numbers : # echo 60000 > /proc/sys/fs/file-max # echo 180000 > /proc/sys/fs/inode-max # ulimit -n 60000 o mount your filesystems with the "noatime" option o make sure your disks holding the logs are "fast enough" o You can tweak a bit your TCP/IP stack : # echo 0 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/tcp_syncookies # echo 0 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/tcp_ecn # echo 0 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/tcp_timestamps # echo 0 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/tcp_window_scaling

Finally don't forget to compile Pike with --with-max-fd=60000 (already done in Debian packages).

	Warning from Caudium people
	Personally deactivate window scaling seems to be a bad idea. This needs some touches. 2.2 and 2.4 options are mixed above very badly. Also, turning off ECN might do you more harm than gain.

Also see LinuxPerf, and LinuxPerf kernel tuning section.

---

5.3.2. FreeBSD

Here are the optimizations you can try on your servers. They are provided without any warranty.

All this is for FreeBSD 4.2 or more recent.

First, check to see if your filesystems use Soft Updates:

# tunefs -p /dev/da0s1a tunefs: soft updates: (-n) disabled tunefs: maximum contiguous block count: (-a) 15 tunefs: rotational delay between contiguous blocks: (-d) 0 ms tunefs: maximum blocks per file in a cylinder group: (-e) 2048 tunefs: average file size: (-f) 16384 tunefs: average number of files in a directory: (-s) 64 tunefs: minimum percentage of free space: (-m) 8% tunefs: optimization preference: (-o) time

If soft updates are set to disabled it may be a good idea to enable them. We do not recommend you enable them on "/" filesystem on servers machines, there are issues and in general this is not recommended by the FreeBSD team. If you can unmount the others filesystems do this and remount them later:

# tunefs -n enable /dev/"whatever"

If you cannot unmount the others filesystem, drop into single mode (do a shutdown now or a boot -s) and then type:

# tunefs -n enable "filesystem"

I suggest /usr or /var. In the fstab you can add ,async to the options of all filesystems. As for soft updates we do not recommend that on server machines for the root (/) filesystem.

In /boot/loader.conf add the following:

kern.ipc.maxsockets="5000" kern.ipc.nmbclusters="65536"

If you have ATA (IDE / UltraDMA) disks you can add also in /boot/loader.conf:

hw.ata.wc="1"

Then in /etc/sysctl.conf you can add:

vfs.vmiodirenable=1 kern.ipc.maxsockbuf=2097152 kern.ipc.somaxconn=8192 kern.ipc.maxsockets=16424 kern.maxfiles=65536 kern.maxfilesperproc=32768 net.inet.tcp.rfc1323=1 net.inet.tcp.delayed_ack=0 net.inet.tcp.sendspace=65535 net.inet.tcp.recvspace=65535 net.inet.udp.recvspace=65535 net.inet.udp.maxdgram=57344 net.local.stream.recvspace=65535 net.local.stream.sendspace=65535

And then reboot (or for /etc/sysctl.conf use the sysctl(8) tool to setup this by hand.

Another way to have good performance is to make a custom kernel, with the minimum of drivers and processor support. A maxuser size = size of memory (for example you have 512M of RAM, then set the maxusers value in your kernel configuration variable to 512). Add Posix 1003.1b real time extensions to the kernel with:

options P1003_1B #Posix P1003_1B real-time extensions options _KPOSIX_PRIORITY_SCHEDULING

Enable the SMP options (only for FreeBSD 4.x, the FreeBSD 5.0 is now automatic).

For French users, check these URLs :

• http://gcu-squad.org/?viewtip+&tip_id=59.

• http://gcu-squad.org/?viewtip+&tip_id=54.

5.4. How to use your own fonts

Use the xdumpfont program in the tool directory of Caudium's sources. This program will convert your X fonts to Caudium fonts.

If your Pike supports TrueType Fonts, (type pike --features and check if Image.TTF is available) you can import TTF font by copying them into /usr/local/caudium/server/fonts/ttf.

5.5. How to get UltraLog working

See the Caudium documentation project at http://caudium.info/, and http://daviesinc.com/modules/docs/ultralog.rxml.

6.1. Your first RXML file

You can try this code. This is a basic one with only four tags/containers. You should go to http://caudium.info/ and download the Roxen 1.3 documentation.

<html>
  <comment>You have to put bgcolor for gtext to work properly</comment>
  <body bgcolor="#FFFFFF">
    <h1>Basic RXML examples</h1>
    <table border="1">
      <tr>
        <td>This is a list of all RXML tags</td>
        <td><list-tags></td>
      </tr>
    </table>
    <table border="1">
      <tr>
        <td>Gtext render text as graphic</td>
        <td><gtext scale=0.5>This is a gif/png graphic</gtext></td>
      </tr>
      <tr>
        <td>Last modification of this page</td>
        <td><modified></td>
      </tr>
    </table>
  </body>
</html>
      

6.2. The Pike tag

For a complete tutorial and reference manual on Pike, see http://pike.oav.net/.

The Pike tag allows you to easily insert Pike code into your HTML page à la PHP. This is a good way of learning Pike if you have a PHP background or if you want to do things very easily and don't worry about perfect results.

To do this, you have to load a module in your server. Just select Load module in the CIF. and click the "Pike tag" image. Then hit save and create an .html file where your public web files are. Since everybody tells me that PHP is easy, which is why it's so popular, I took the PHP examples and converted them to Pike. Here is the result:

<html>
  <body bgcolor="#FFFFFF">
    <h2>Escaping from HTML</h2>
    <p>
      There is one way of escaping from HTML and entering "Pike code mode"
      <br />
      <Pike>
	output("This is the simplest, and SGML processing instruction");
      </Pike>
    </p>
    <h2>Instruction separation</h2>
    <p>
      Instructions are separated the same as in C or Perl: 
      terminate each statement with a semicolon. 
      The closing tag (container, in fact) also implies the end of the statement,
      so the following are equivalent:
      <br />
      <Pike>
	output ("This is a test");
      </Pike>
      <br />
      <Pike> output ("This is a test"); </Pike>
    </p>
    <h2>Comments</h2>
    <p>
      Pike supports C, C++ but not Unix shell-style comments. For example:
      <Pike>
	string tests = "This is a test<br />";  // this is a one-line C++ style comment
	/* This is a multi line comment
         yet another line of comment */
	tests += "Yet another test";
	return tests;
      </Pike>
    </p>
    <h2>Melding RXML and Pike</h2>
    You will never see this in PHP.
    [2]
    This will create a .gif image of 1-2-...-255. 
    This took 0.4s on my Duron 750 the first time and 0.1s after.
    <p>
      <gtext scale=0.5>
	<Pike>
	  string output = "";
	  for(int I = 1; I < 255; I++) 
	    output += I + "-";
	  return output;
	</Pike>
      </gtext>
    </p>
  </body>
</html>
      

The problem with using this is that you will soon see it is not powerful:

• The code will become an ugly mixture of data and code even if you use an object orientation method. The more your project grows, the less you will be able to produce something useful.

• The URL will require plenty of those "&" symbols and you will have a lot of files without real organization.

• The performance will not be the best.

• This can be considered as a security risk for servers that are opened to unknown users (eg. public web servers).

The next step is to write your first Pike script.

6.3. Your first Pike script

A Pike script is quite like a Perl script. It is executed when the user tries to access it. So a Pike script is usually where your public web files are. This is a good choice if you already have a Perl background and want to try Pike.

You have two choices when doing this. You can execute Pike as a CGI script or internally within the server. If you don't know what CGI is, look up the Apache-Overview-HOWTO at http://www.tldp.org/.

Here, we will run Pike scripts internally within Caudium. To achieve this, you have to load another module in your server by selecting Load module in the CIF.. You now have the list of all modules available in Caudium. As you see, there are a lot of modules and reading this page should give you some ideas for future development. To select the Pike script module, just click on the image named "Pike script support" if you use a graphical browser.

You can now create a .pike file containing, for example,

// you have to inherit caudiumlib to have some basic things
// like the id object and response mapping
inherit "caudiumlib";

// the same as the main
// if you modify this script and you see that Caudium don't take your
// modification into account, reload the Pike script support module
// This is because Caudium uses a cache for performance reasons
string parse(object id)
{
  string html = "<html><body>The id object contain some "
  "very useful information<br />";
  html += sprintf("The id->variables contain a list of "
  "arguments given to this script %O\n", id->variables);
  return html;
}  
      

Pike scripts are usually used for little internal development. Pike scripts can be very useful in this case because you can create something with very little lines. Here is an example of such a script:

/* Here is a Pike script (not a Caudium module).
   This script is less than 20 lines (comments
   and blank lines excluded) and will randomly
   return one file to the web browser from a list of files.
   This script was kindly provided by Xavier Beaudouin */

// first we need to inherit from caudiumlib in order to get
// the parse, http_redirect functions and id object
// recognized.
inherit "caudiumlib";

// we declare an array of files
array (string)files;

// an ASCII text containing the name of a file
// on the real filesystem.
// Each file name in this file will be
// randomly return (the files name have to be on
// a separate line).
#define FILELIST "/list"

#define BASEDIR "/thepath2yourfiles/"

// this function is the constructor, it will be loaded first
void create () {
 // the array of strings 'files' will contain
 // all the files we serve provided the file
 // FILELIST list each file name on one line.
 files = Stdio.read_bytes(FILELIST)/"\n";
}

// if no_reload return 1, Caudium will cache the
// result of this script for maximum performances
// and will not execute it a second time.
// As a result, If you give the argument 
// ?reload=1 to your script, Caudium will 
// reload it. 
// This is useful to use cache for average
// content delivery unless you are doing
// developpement
int no_reload(object id)
{
 if(!id->variables->reload)
   return 1;
 return 0;
}

// As this is a simple pike script (CGI like), this function
// will be called by Caudium and should return a string that
// will be display to the client's browser.
// It can also return a mapping containing all the HTTP response
// (headers + text)
mapping parse(object id)
{
 // We randomly return one of the file we list in the FILELIST file
 // (relative to BASEDIR directory).
 // http_redirect will send a HTTP 301 header telling the browser
 // where to get randomly selected file.
 return http_redirect(BASEDIR + files[random(sizeof(files))],id);
}
      

But you can also create some powerful scripts:

inherit "caudiumlib";

string|mapping|object parse( object id )
{
  id->my_fd->write(id->clientprot + " 200 Ok\r\n");
  id->my_fd->write("Server: Caudium !\r\n");
  id->my_fd->write("Expires: 0\r\n");
  id->my_fd->write("Content-Type: text/html\r\n");
  id->my_fd->write("pragma: no-cache\r\n\r\n");
  id->my_fd->set_id( ({ id->my_fd }) );
  id->my_fd->set_nonblocking(0,send_data);
  return http_pipe_in_progress();
}

void send_data(array (object) id)
{

  id[0]->write("<pre>");
  id[0]->write("test......................\n");
  id[0]->write("test......................\n");
  id[0]->write("test......................\n");
  id[0]->write("sleep for 10 sec\n");
  sleep(10);
  id[0]->write("Done</pre>");
  id[0]->close();
  destruct(id[0]);
}
      

This example uses non-blocking sockets. my_fd is the file descriptor of the HTTP socket. Here we change the type of the HTTP socket from blocking sockets (default type) to non-blocking sockets. Non-blocking sockets are sockets that won't block the program waiting for data. Instead, a read and write function (the so-called callback functions) will be called automatically when there is some data to read or write to the HTTP socket. Moreover, we return here a special function, http_pipe_in_progress. This is because as the HTTP socket is set to non-blocking, Caudium won't be able to wait for processing the HTTP stuff like headers and so on. So we have to tell it not to wait for us and send a http_pipe_in_progress.

This mechanism is very useful when you have to do some communication with slow sockets on a single process server (multi-threaded one). In the case of a single process, when you wait for a socket it is all the server, which will wait. So all your users will be stalled. With non blocking sockets there is no problem anymore; the server won't wait for each socket. Example of such code includes CAMAS IMAP/NNTP clients. If you don't understand, don't worry, you usually don't have to understand these mechanisms.

However, the Pike script allows you to write some complex code it is not well suited for big projects. If this is the case, read the next paragraph and enjoy.

The Caudium API is available at http://caudium.net/. You should also read the Roxen 1.3 PDF available at http://caudium.info/. Pike scripts are blocking, and allow your users to run scripts with the same privilege as the server. Blocking means that the server will be stalled if a socket from a pike script is stalled (usually waiting for something). This applies even if you use non-blocking sockets in your script. You don't have this problem with modules.

6.4. Your first module

With a custom module you can do all sorts of things:

• You can create a professional quality administration center very easily.

• You don't need any more "&" symbols in the URL.

• You can also use per user variables, also known as session variables.

• You'll get better performance since the module is part of the server.

• You can separate big projects into different modules, and do calls between different modules. This way, your project is not a big complex of messy code, but a set of simple, easy to extend code modules.

• You can separate data from code by using tags and containers. This also allows you to delegate the appearance to your webmaster, and lets you focus on the important code.

• You can easily share your code with the Caudium community. If your code is good and useful, it can become part of the Caudium distribution. This way more people will test it, you will have more feedback, and some people may help you with your project, and may even maintain it.

There are different types of modules, for example:

• Location:

  This is the most common module, your code is called when the user hits the URL you specify in the mount point.

• Parser:

  Your code is called when Caudium parse a file containing the tags and/or containers you define.

• Authentication:

  Used to authenticate users with, for example, LDAP, shadow, or SQL.

• Directory:

  For indexing files in a directory.

• First module:

  Module that is called just after the authentication module, thus letting you handle the whole request before normal processing.

There are other module types. For a complete reference see the Roxen 1.3 Programmer's Guide at http://caudium.info/.

For an example on how to write a container, see fnord.pike in /Caudium/sources. Because the location module is a must, here is another example:

// It is intended to show a simple example of a location module.

// This module output the result of the who(1) command. It is not meant to
// be really useful since it would be better to do a <who /> tag thus
// having data in the HTML files and code here

// This variable is shown in the configuration interface as the
// version of the module.
string CVS_version = "$Id";

// Tell Caudium that this module is 'thread safe', that is, there is no
// request-specific data in global variables.
int thread_safe=1;

#include <module.h>
inherit "module";
// for the http_string_answer API
inherit "caudiumlib"; 
 
// Documentation:
 
constant module_type = MODULE_LOCATION;
constant module_name = "Who";
constant module_doc  = "Send the result of the who(1) command ";
constant module_unique = 1;

// The constructor of this module.
// This function is called each time you/Caudium load the module
void create()
{
  defvar("location", "/who", "Mount point", TYPE_LOCATION, 
  "The mount point of this module"); 
  /* each string have to be on a single
   line, don't do: "The mount point of
   this module".
   You can however do "The mount point of "
   "this module";
   */
  defvar("path2who", "/usr/bin/who", 
  "Path to the who command", TYPE_FILE);
  defvar("options2who", "-a", 
  "Options given to who", TYPE_STRING);
  defvar("codebeforewho", "<html><body><p>", 
  "The code to output before who", TYPE_STRING);
  defvar("codeafterwho", "</p></body></html>", "The code to output after who",
  TYPE_STRING);
}

// This function is called when a user access mount point
// path is the path to the URL he used
// id contains Caudium global variables such as browser name,...
mixed find_file(string path, object id)
{
  // get the contents of the CIF. variables path2who and options2who 
  // and put a single space between it.
  string command = QUERY(path2who)+" "+QUERY(options2who);
  // this will write the result of command to the debug log file
  // very useful for debug
  write(sprintf("command=%s\n", command));
  string result = Process.popen(command);
  // replacing \n by \n<br /> for better output
  result = replace(result, "\n","\n<br />");
  return http_string_answer(QUERY(codebeforewho)+result+QUERY(codeafterwho));
}
      

Put this code in ../local/modules/who.pike relative to /usr/local/caudium/server in our example. Log into the CIF., if it is not the case and go into the main Action tab -> Cache -> Flush caches. Check the Module cache check the box and press Next, then OK.

Come back to the main Virtual servers tab and choose one of your servers. Do Add module and select the who module. If you don't have the who module, check your events log.

You don't need to compile to have a working module. You don't even need to restart the web server. When you develop a module and change the code every 30 seconds, you just have to push the Reload button to get the changes. It takes about one second and if there was a compilation error the old copy remains for users.

6.5. How to use a backtrace

A backtrace is text that will show you where your program come before the error. This is very useful for developers when they debug. The best is to take an example. Did you try the who module at the end of Section 6.4? If so take it and check it works. Now change the line string command = QUERY(path2who)+" "+QUERY(options2who); to string command = 0;. This will create an error because we put an int into a string. If we want to do that, we have to cast it (for example, use (string) 0). If you have not done it yet, press the More options button in the CIF. and reload the module. Check that the Global Variables -> show_internals option is set to yes, and try your module. You will have an error which should look like this:

Caudium version: Caudium (Caudium/1.2.0)
Requested URL: /who

Error: Sprintf: Wrong type for argument 2: expected string, got int.
../local/modules/who.pike:76: 
CaudiumModule(Who,My first virtual server)->find_file("",object)
base_server/configuration.pike (version 1.91):1587: 
Configuration(My first virtual server)->low_get_file(object,0)
base_server/configuration.pike (version 1.91):1779: 
Configuration(My first virtual server)->get_file(object,0)
base_server/configuration.pike (version 1.91):1760: 
Configuration(My first virtual server)->handle_request(object)
protocols/http.pike (version 1.71):1549: unknown function()
protocols/http.pike (version 1.71):1610: 
unknown function(0,"GET /who HTTP/1.1\r\nHost: localhost\r\nUser-Agent:
Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:0.9.8) 
Gecko/20020214\r\nAccept: text/xml,application/xml,
application/xhtml+xml,text/html;q=0.9,text/plain"+[246])
/usr/local/pike/7.2.262/lib/modules/Stdio.pmod/module.pmod
(version 1.114):683:
Stdio.File("socket", "127.0.0.1 1260", 777 /* fd=-1 */)
->__stdio_read_callback()
      

This seems awful but it is not. The first line is the error in itself:

"Error: Sprintf: Wrong type for argument 2: expected string, got int."
The next line "../local/modules/who.pike:76: 
CaudiumModule(Who,My first virtual server)->find_file("",object)"
is the program (../local/modules/who.pike at line 76)
      

6.6. How to print something to debug log file

With Caudium you can output something to the web page or to the debug log file located in ../logs/debug/default.*. This way the end-user will not see any line you can output in your debug log file. Sending output to the debug log file is simple, just write to stdout:

write("my message to log file\n");

It is also usually useful to use sprintf to format what you want to output:

int i = 2; write(sprintf("i=%d\n", i));

This line will output i=2, but it is better when you output array or mapping, as Pike is able to print them in a human-comprehensible format:

array a = ({ "test", "test2", 2 }); write(sprintf("a=%O\n", a));

Which will output:

a = ({ /* 2 elements */ "test", "test2" })

the %O format is very useful since it can output any type from int to mapping. The only type you can't format is object.

7.1. How to promote Caudium

Caudium, and Roxen problems are not technical. Instead, they are advertising and marketing. Caudium needs to become recognized. It could the best product in the world, but if nobody knows, it will not be used. To help Caudium to become recognized for its quality there are some simple things we can do together:

• Try it, and give us feedback about your experience.

• Write some documentation. Without documentation, a project is useless.

• Recommend Caudium to some people you know. You don't really have to tell them to try it now or they will die, just tell him about it. If other people tell them the same thing, chances are that they will install it. When these people install Caudium, they will look for documentation.

• Mention Caudium in newsgroups/web sites telling them what you think of it.

• Translate documentation.

If you do this, you will help promote Caudium's success. Remember, one of Caudium disadvantages is that the community is too small right now.

The next paragraph is for people who want to get involved a little more, but don't have lot of time, and/or are not technically minded.

7.2. How to write documentation

There are two types of documentation needed for Caudium:

• Press articles.

  You can write press articles about Caudium.

  	Note for French writers:
  	You can contact us for that.

  This type of documentation is usually not really helpful since few in the community will read it. It is useful mainly for advertising (even if you made a very technical article, this is useful).

• Documentation available from Internet.

  This type of documentation is a must; Caudium can't exist without it. This documentation will help Caudium's newbies, and will also be useful for developers. One good way to start with Caudium is using the Roxen 1.3 documentation. The developers should also see the autodoc. These are in-line documents made in the sources, and available as formatted HTML output at http://caudium.net/.

  There is also a lack for a more in-depth documentation for developer. Examples include how to code non-blocking sockets, how to use a backtrace, how to use the do_output_tag, and when should I put thread_safe=1. I remember spending hours trying to understand some of these things on IRC without any documentation available. This sort of documentation should be written by one of the top developers.

  This documentation is written using XSLT, but if you don't know it, that's not a problem. Give us whatever format you want, we will translate it. It is the same for the language. If you don't speak English, you can write it in your own language and we will translate. We will also proof-read your work carefully in order to correct any typos or inaccuracies you might leave.

  To write this type of documentation, contact the person in charge of the documentation project, ice at caudium dot net.

7.3. How to get a CVS account

Unlike other projects, it's relatively not much hassle to get access to Caudium cvs tree. Even if you are a beginner you can have cvs access; we just ask you not to change Caudium's core at the beginning.

To get a CVS account, come on IRC or send a mail to kiwi at caudium dot net and explain your plan.

7.4. How to test Caudium

There is a test suite for Caudium written in Expect which uses TCL and DejaGNU. If you want to use it, fetch it from Caudium's CVS repository with the -P testsuite option (the information on this CVS repository is on http://caudium.net/.) Note that this test suite is not maintained, and needs some work.

7.5. How to send a bug report

To send a bug report, copy/paste the error from Caudium's log file (including backtrace, see Section 6.5), your configuration, and the context in which it happened.

Go to http://caudium.net/ and choose bug tracking on the left and follow the instructions.

8.1. Revision History

• Version 2.2 : September 20, 2002

  Added images and icons.

  Better use of Docbook.

  Updates in the FreeBSD ports section.

  Few more fixes.

• Version 2.1 : June 26, 2002

  Little language and cosmetic corrections.

  Added the script for image selection in the your first Pike script.

  Corrections in the FreeBSD ports section.

  The file is now well-formed XML.

• Version 2.0 : June 14, 2002

  LDP Review of documentation.

  Added cross reference to full GFDL in Appendix A.

  Converted to Docbook XML 4.1.2.

  Removed editing notations that are corrected.

  Corrected links to LDP (Linux Documentation Project).

  Made sentence level corrections-spelling, grammar, etc.

• Version 1.0 : June 6, 2002

  Initial Release

  Submitted to the LDP

• Version 0.91 : May 22, 2002

  The SGML source is now the authoritative source

  The SGML source is now correctly indented

  Many little SGML changes in the document

  Added the Upgrading Caudium paragraph

  Added a note about the start script config-dir option

• Version 0.9 : May 7, 2002

  Better HTML conformance to avoid Caudium crash on caudium.info.

  Inserting the notes from Kiwi, Grendel and other into the document.

  Removed all TODO and #define sections.

  Completed the test suite section.

  Added the contributors section.

  Now docbook2ps and docbook2pdf correctly parse the SGML file.

• Version 0.05 : April 4, 2002

  This HOWTO is in Docbook format. Thanks to Thomas Marteau.

• Version 0.04 : March 26, 2002

  Added Introduction and license.

  Added a note in "Your first pike script".

  Corrected typo in paragraph number.

  Re-organization of the document.

• Version 0.03 : March 22, 2002

  More Caudium disadvantages and some useful corrections from people at the Caudium general mailing list.

  Answers:

  How to get UltraLog working.

  How to benchmark a web server.

  How to use a backtrace.

  How to print something to debug log file.

  How to get CAMAS from cvs/source.

• Version 0.02 : March 18, 2002

  Minor correction in other answers.

  Answers:

  How to run Caudium as a non-privileged user.

  How to secure Caudium.

  How to tune Caudium for best performance.

  How to get packages for Debian GNU/Linux.

  How to get packages for FreeBSD.

  How to get packages for Solaris.

  How to use your own fonts.

  How to help Caudium Community.

• Version 0.01 : March 11, 2002

  Initial revision. Plain text format.

8.2. Credits and contributors

Here is the list of people that helped me in one way or another to get this HOWTO written:

8.3. The End

Thanks for reading. I hope this HOWTO will help you discover Caudium's power. And remember this quotation:

	Documentation is like sex: when it is good, it is very, very good; and when it is bad, it is better than nothing.
--Dick Brandon

If you have any questions about this documentation, contact me at <vida at caudium dot net> or the Caudium general mailing list at <general at oav dot net>