httpd lineage

Ben Scott dragonhawk at gmail.com
Thu Feb 8 10:49:27 EST 2007


On 2/8/07, Paul Lussier <p.lussier at comcast.net> wrote:
>> Actually, the Apache Software Foundation spells it "httpd".  Nobody
>> paid any attention until Red Hat changed the package names.  Now
>> nobody but Red Hat pays any attention.  :)
>
> Oh, is that what happened?  Heh, that's kinda funny. So, technically
> Debian is wrong :)

  I dunno...

  Red Hat used to call the packages apache-*, but changed to httpd-*
instead.  But since they were being pedantic anyway, they really
should have used apache-httpd-* as the package names.  "Apache" is the
name of the organization; "httpd" is the name of their big project;
there are other "httpd" programs out there.

  As far as the executable name goes, "httpd" is prolly the closest
thing to an objective correct name, since that's what the ASF default
is.  If ambiguity between "httpd" programs is a concern, using a
directory (like /usr/libexec/apache-2.0/httpd or /opt/apache/bin/httpd
or whatever convention one prefers) would be the "correct" thing to
do.

> Perhaps.  At one time wasn't the user was also 'apache'?  Debian has
> sadly moved to using 'www-data' as their "web-server username", which
> I really hate.

  Ewwww.  Yah.  I mean, okay, maybe you want to have a standard
executable name for all the various web servers, but "httpd" or "www"
or something would be much better.  "www-data" implies, well, that
it's only for data, which is really bogus -- the whole point is to
give the web server *program* something specific to run as.

  And I must say, this whole thread is remarkably pedantic, even for
this group.  ;-)

-- Ben


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