Release Notes for Sun Java™ System Web Server 6.1 Add-Ons
FastCGI Plugin 6.1

Release Notes for Sun Java™ System Web Server 6.1 Add-Ons
FastCGI Plugin 1.0

Version 6.1

Part Number 819-1809

March 2005

These release notes contain important information available at the time of release of Sun Java™ System Web Server 6.1 FastCGI Plugin, including information about server application functions (SAFs), installation, configuration, technical notes, and pointers to additional resources. Review the release notes prior to installing and configuring your software, and then periodically thereafter for the most up-to-date information.

Complete Sun Java System Web Server 6.1 documentation can be found at the following location:
http://docs.sun.com/db/prod/s1websrv#hic

These release notes contain the following sections:

Introduction

FastCGI (http://www.fastcgi.com) is an open extension to CGI (Common Gateway Interface), which is a standard for interfacing external applications with web servers. Like CGI, FastCGI applications run in separate, isolated processes. Some of the FastCGI's advantages are as follows:

The FastCGI Plugin allows the Sun Java System Web Server to safely work with popular third party dynamic content generation technologies (PHP, Perl, Python, etc.) in a scalable way.

The FastCGI Plugin implements the client side of the FastCGI protocol. This protocol allows producers of dynamic content (and content engines) to implement a common, scalable API that can be utilized by many web servers.

Server Application Functions (SAFs)

The FastCGI Plugin provides the following Server Application Functions (SAFs):

The various parameters and "error-reason" strings for the FastCGI SAFs are described in the following sections:

auth-fastcgi

The auth-fastcgi Service Application Function (SAF) is used in a PathCheck directive. This SAF is used to specify a the FastCGI server application to be used for authorization.

The auth-fastcgi PathCheck SAF sends the request to the specified "Authorizer" FastCGI application. If the application has returned a status code of "200", the authorization has succeeded and the Web Server proceeds with request execution. Otherwise, the response that was sent by the FastCGI application is sent back to the User-Agent.

The auth-fastcgi SAF is optional and should only be used to forward the requests to an authorizer FastCGI application.

The parameters accepted by auth-fastcgi SAF, are available at: FastCGI SAF Paramters.

The following obj.conf code example demonstrates the use of auth-fastcgi:

PathCheck fn="auth-fastcgi" app-path="/foo/bin/php" bind-path="fooUDS"

On the first request to the auth-fastcgi, FastCGI plugin creates the FastCGI authorizer application processes and sends the request for evaluation.

responder-fastcgi

The responder-fastcgi Server Application Function (SAF) forwards a request to a FastCGI application that acts as a "Responder", for further processing. responder-fastcgi sends the request data to the listener onto which the app-path application processes are listening. Once the application responds to the request, service-fastcgi will process the response headers before sending them back to the User-Agent.

The list of parameters accepted by responder-fastcgi SAF, are available at: FastCGI SAF Paramters.

The following obj.conf code example demonstrates the use of responder-fastcgi:

Service fn="responder-fastcgi" app-path="/foo/bin/perl" bind-path="fooPerl"

filter-fastcgi

The filter-fastcgi Server Application Function (SAF) forwards a request to a FastCGI application that acts as a "Filter", for further processing. A filter application receives the information associated with an HTTP request, plus additional data from a file stored on the server, and generates a "filtered" version of the data stream as the response.

filter-fastcgi sends the request data in FastCGI record format to the application specified by app-path. Once the application responds to the request, filter-fastcgi will process the response headers before sending them to the User-Agent.

The list of parameters accepted by filter-fastcgi SAF, are available at: FastCGI SAF Paramters.

The following obj.conf code example demonstrates the use of filter-fastcgi:

Service type="magnus-internal/perl" fn="filter-fastcgi" app-path="/foo/bin/perl" bind-path="fooPerl"

error-fastcgi

The error-fastcgi Server Application Function (SAF) is called when the FastCGI plugin encounters an error. This is used to display a specified page or URL.

The list of parameters accepted by error-fastcgi SAF, are available at: FastCGI SAF Paramters.

The following obj.conf snippet demonstrates the use of error-fastcgi:

Error fn="error-fastcgi" error-reason="Fastcgi Connection Error" error-url="http://www.foo.com/errorPage1.html"

FastCGI SAF Parameters

FastCGI Plugin SAFs--"auth-fastcgi" and "responder-fastcgi"--both accept the following parameters unless otherwise mentioned explicitly:

Note that parameters chroot, user, group and nice are applicable to only Unix platforms. On Windows platforms, these parameters are ignored.

The error-fastcgi Server Application Function (SAF) accepts the following parameters:

FastCGI SAF Error Reason Strings

Here is the list of valid "error-reason" strings:

Installing the FastCGI Plugin

The FastCGI Plugin is available for use with the Sun Java System Web Server 6.1 SP4 or later Service Packs.

This section includes the following topics:

Package Contents

The contents of the platform specific packages are:

Solaris, Linux, AIX:

HP-UX:

Windows:

The FastCGI plugin is packaged as a tarball, a zip file, an SVR4 package, and an rpm package.

Installing on Solaris, Linux, HP-UX and AIX Using tar Packaging

$ gzip -d sun-webserver61-fastcgi-{sol|lin|hpux|aix}.tar.gz
;; Uncompress the tar archive,
;; where {sol|lin|hpux|aix} reflects
;; the operating system
;; environment the library will
;; be used

$ tar xvf sun-webserver61-fastcgi-{sol|lin|hpux|aix}.tar

;; Extract the tar archive

Please refer to "Configuring the FastCGI Plugin."

Installing on Windows

$ unzip sun-webserver61-fastcgi-win.zip
;; Uncompress the ZIP archive

Please refer to "Configuring the FastCGI Plugin."

Installing on Solaris Using SVr4 Packaging

$ su
;; root access is required to install
;; SVr4 packages

$ cd <path/to/package>

;; Change directory to where the package
;; is located

# pkgadd -d .

;; Install SUNWwbsvr-fastcgi.pkg package

NOTE: This will place the shared object and README in: /opt/SUNWwbsvr/plugins/fastcgi

Please refer to "Configuring the FastCGI Plugin."

Installing on Linux using RPM Packaging

$ su
;; root access is required to
;; install RPM packages

$ cd <path/to/package>

;; Change directory to where
;; the package is located

# rpm -iUvh sun-webserver-fastcgi.rpm

;; Install
;; sun-webserver-fastcgi.rpm
;; package

NOTE: This will place the shared object and README in /opt/sun/webserver/plugins/fastcgi

Please refer to "Configuring the FastCGI Plugin."

Configuring the FastCGI Plugin

The FastCGI plugin is configured via the existing magnus.conf and obj.conf Web Server configuration files as documented in the following subsections.

magnus.conf

The existing load-modules SAF is used to load the FastCGI plugin shared object. The shared object filename varies by platform as follows:
  • libfastcgi.so (Solaris, Linux, AIX)
  • libfastcgi.sl (HP-UX)
  • fastcgi.dll (Windows)

The following magnus.conf code example demonstrates the use of load-modules to load the FastCGI plugin:

Init fn="load-modules" shlib="/opt/SUNWwbsvr/plugins/fastcgi/libfastcgi.so"

obj.conf

The FastCGI plugin introduces the following SAFs that can be referenced in obj.conf:

  • auth-fastcgi
  • responder-fastcgi
  • filter-fastcgi
  • error-fastcgi

For example, the following obj.conf code example configures the server to forward requests in the /fcgi/php and /fcgi/perl URI space to fcgi.php and fcgi.perl respectively, which in turn is configured to pass the requests to FastCGI module for further processing. 

<Object name="default">
NameTrans fn="assign-name"
          from="/fcgi/php(|/*)"
          name="fcgi.php"
NameTrans fn="assign-name"
	  from="/fcgi/perl(|/*)"
	  name="fcgi.perl"
...
Service type="magnus-internal/perl" fn="filter-fastcgi"\
<other parameters required for running Filter FastCGI processes>
....
</Object>

<Object name="fcgi.php">
PathCheck fn="auth-fastcgi" <other parameters required for running Authorizer FastCGI processes>
Service fn="responder-fastcgi" <other parameters required for running Responder FastCGI processes>
</Object>

<Object name="fcgi.perl">
PathCheck fn="auth-fastcgi" <other parameters required for running Authorizer FastCGI processes>
Service type="magnus-internal/perl" fn="responder-fastcgi" <other parameters required for running Responder FastCGI processes>
Error fn="error-fastcgi" error-reason="Fastcgi Connection Error" error-url="http://www.foo.com/errorPage1.html"
</Object>
.
.
.

Note that FastCGI SAFs can be invoked in different ways as mentioned above; that is, defining different Objects for different URL patterns or mapping them to different MIME types.

  • Known Problems

    • Known Problems

    This section includes the known problems with the Sun Java System Web Server 6.1 FastCGI Plugin.

    Table 3  Known Problems in Sun Java System Web Server 6.1 FastCGI Plugin

    Problem ID

    Description

    6228687

    On Linux 2.1 Advanced Server only: caution - Fastcgistub process is restarted when the parent webservd process is killed.

    How to Report Problems and Provide Feedback

    If you have problems with Sun Java System Web Server 6.1 FastCGI Plugin, contact Sun customer support using one of the following mechanisms:

    So that we can best assist you in resolving problems, please have the following information available when you contact support:

    • Description of the problem, including the situation where the problem occurs and its impact on your operation
    • Machine type, operating system version, and product version, including any patches and other software that might be affecting the problem
    • Detailed steps on the methods you have used to reproduce the problem
    • Any error logs or core dumps

    Sun Welcomes Your Comments

    Sun is interested in improving its documentation and welcomes your comments and suggestions. Send your comments to Sun using the "Send comments" link at:  http://docs.sun.com/

    Please include identifying information with your comments, such as the book’s part number and title.

    Additional Sun Resources

    Useful Sun ONE information can be found at the following locations:

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