Latest version of Stunnix Perl Web Server

Latest version of Stunnix Perl Web Server is 2.10. If you wish to be notified of new versions of Stunnix Perl Web Server as soon as they are released, you can signup for Stunnix Newsletter.

New features in version 2.10

• This version fixes showing splash screen at startup on MacOSX;
• Now CDBuilder (GUI to create CDs or DVDs with webserver on them) can import MySQL database data from .sql files;
• Ejection of media is not performed if run from device other than CD/DVD.
• Icons on the CD are layed out wisely in Finder now.

New features in version 2.9

• Now splash screen is shown at web server startup on MacOS X too.
• CDBuilder GUI now lets set environment variables, and lets set MySQL configuration file and siteinfo.pm pieces (per each platform, and common for all platforms).
• InnoDB is now better supported in MySQL of any version.

New features in version 2.8

• This version adds support for ionCube Encoder for PHP scripts on MacOSX on Intel (x86) CPUs now scripts encoded with ionCube Encoder are supported on all platforms SAWS can run on (Windows, MacOSX - on PPC and Intel CPUs, and Linux on x86 CPUs).

New features in version 2.7

• Added support for MySQL version 5.0. Now one can choose which version to use - 4.1 or 5.0. This is done in 'MySQL' section of project settings in CDBuilder - when specifying mysql access mode, one has 2 options for each access mode - with version 4.1 or version 5.0 of MySQL server. Support of MySQL 5.0 means ability to use databases that use features added to version 5.0 of MySQL with Stunnix Perl Web Server.
• Minor fixes to the CDBuilder UI have been made.

New features in version 2.6

• Full support for Mac OS X on Intel CPUs has been added, because PowerPC version ran improperly on Mac OS X on Intel CPUs; Note that since working decoders for ZendOptimizer and IonCube for Mac OS X on Intel CPUs are still not available from corresponding vendors, support for these decoders is absent in this version of Stunnix Perl Web Server. Note that all external programs (e.g. run before server is started or before browser is started) for MacOSX should be either wrapper scripts (that start version of program specific to the host CPU) or Universal binaries since we didn't fork all MacOSX settings into settings for MacOSX x86 only and settings and MacOSX PPC only.
• Various non-important corrections to the code and documentation have been made.

New features in version 2.5

• Fixed severe bug that prevented some database files to be copied to hard disk correctly on Windows. E.g. that bug prevented Joomla and Mambo from working.
• Fixed severe bug that sometimes occured on Windows with PHP scripts that send binary data to browser (when windows newlines were being replaced with unix newlines in the stream).
• Now splash screen stays on screen until the browser was started.
• Added guide on installing Joomla from scratch; Joomla-powered section added to demo cd.
• Added tooltips to CDBuilder interface.

New features in version 2.4

• Added CDBuilder - GUI tool that allows to configure all properties of CD or application without ever touching configuration files.
• Added support for PHP5. User now has a choice between PHP4 and PHP5.
• A lot of options were added for configuring window properies of browser on Windows platforms, when MSIE browser has to be used - whether to show scrollbars, menus,statusbar,toolbar, resizebar and so on, with names starting with win32_msie_prop__, making application look even more desktop-like.
• Added configuration option not to eject CD on exit of the server (CD is ejected by default).
• Added ability to run user-specified programs before starting web server, this is very useful if you wish to have animated logo for your product instead of a static image - just use flash projector as such program, using 'program_to_run_before_server_M' options.
• Perl interpreter for linux and all perl-related files for linux were updated to Perl version 5.8.5.
• Default template for autorun.inf supports the use CDROM icon (if it's specified in CDBuilder).
• Added ability to specify text of message that warns user about necessity to turn off firewalls win32_firewall_alert_message) - useful for translating it to other languages.
• Directory with php extension (the one where phpinfo.html is located) is now added to a list of directories where dynamic linker of the OS looks for shared libraries.

New features in version 2.3

• Added ability to run programs from cdrom before and after starting the browser; those programs are stopped automatically along webserver; the names of the programs and time to wait after starting them are specified using keys (in /site/config/siteinfo.pm) 'program_to_run_N_browser_M', 'program_to_run_N_browser_M_sleep_seconds' where N can be 'before' and 'after', and M can be 1,2 or 3.
• Added ability to specify inital port to start searching free ports from (using option port_to_start_scanning_from) - useful for people who wish server to listen at port 80.
• Added support for PHP extensions domxml, iconv and mbstring (note: MacOSX 10.2 is not supported by them! And those extensions must be enabled explicitly in php config files).

New features in version 2.2

• Now site can be opened in MSIE in kiosk mode on Windows (by use of new configuration file setting 'win32_prefer_ie_kiosk_mode').
• Support for FastCGI for PHP is now disabled on MacOSX due to some problems. The problem with PHP on MacOSX exists only if you've updated your installation of SPWS using this archive; specifically, if file /extensions/engines/php4-ppc-macosx/fcgiwrapper exists on your cdrom.
• Fixes for mode when default browser was used on Windows (implementation had bugs in it).

New features in version 2.1

• On Linux and MacOSX FastCGI is used for invoking PHP interpreter now (php executables were updated to support this), resulting in 2 times time decrease taken for serving php-driven pages.
• Support for GD (image generation and graphics library) on all platforms added to PHP.
• Now there is no need to grant access to all tables in MySQL database to some specific user since mysql access tables are ignored to simplify transfer of database files.
• Added new possible value once_to_permdir to option copy_to_hdd of extensions mysql_data and sqlite_data - thus it's now possible to keep copied database files in non-temporary directory, meaning that even cleaning all temp files won't loose all changes user has done to databases.
• HTA files are now supported out of the box (mimetype for it is registered now).
• XCGI.pm was updated to better support running XCGI scripts in CGI mode.

In order to gain all new features this release of SPWS provides (for those who are already creating products based on SPWS), one has to extract the archive with changed files on the top of CDROM prototype (besides web server core located in /site/stunnixwebsrv, as described in Guide on Installing SPWS Purchased From Store).

New features in version 2.0

• Loaders for all major platforms for PHP files encoded with Zend Encoder are integrated into SPWS, this means that it's possible to use encoded PHP scripts with SPWS without fear that they will be studied, stolen or reworked and illegally integrated into other products; PHP files encoded with IonCube PHP Encoder were supported by SPWS since previous release. (And as always, use Stunnix Perl-Obfus for protecting your Perl scripts and Stunnix JS-Obfus for JavaScript code).
• SQLite is now supported on all platforms by PHP shipped with SPWS.
• Now it's possible to display splash screen during SPWS startup on Windows; just put your logo into /splash.bmp. It's OK for this file to be missing - nothing will be shown in this case.
• Stability of running SPWS on Windows was improved.
• Now SPWS works from CDROMs mounted with noexec flag on Linux and Unix systems; this is detected by wrapper script and user is warned about possible problems (including inability to run PHP scripts and mysql server).
• SPWS Quick Start Guide and Guide on Installing SPWS Purchased From Store are now available.

In order to gain all new features this release of SPWS provides (for those who are already creating products based on SPWS), one has to extract the archive with changed files on the top of CDROM prototype (besides web server core located in /site/stunnixwebsrv, as described in Guide on Installing SPWS Purchased From Store).

New features in version 1.6

• Loaders for all major platforms for PHP files encoded with IonCube PHP Encoder are integrated into SPWS, this means that it's possible to use encoded PHP scripts with SPWS without fear that they will be studied, stolen or reworked and illegally integrated into other products. (And as always, use Stunnix Perl-Obfus for protecting your Perl scripts and Stunnix JS-Obfus for JavaScript code).
• Default browser can now be really used on Windows, controlled by win32_prefer_ie setting in /site/config/siteinfo.pm
• 'copy_to_hdd=once' now works correctly for MySQL and SQLite.
• Don't abort if number of remaining free slave processes is different from expected, just complain to error log.
• Now CDROM can be started in GNOME and KDE desktop environments on linux by double-clicking on /autorun (before, one had to type ./autorun in terminal to run the product).
• Path to php extensions and to mysql socket are correctly registered in the generated php.ini file.
• Added explanatory comments to some config files.
• Full SPWS demo now includes two copies of phpMyAdmin (MySQL administration tool implemented in PHP) - unmodified and encoded one.
• Front page of full SPWS demo got new design and a lot of comments to the functionality it demonstrates.

New features in version 1.5

• Apple MacOS X 10.4 (Tiger) is now officially supported by SPWS.
• Perl CGI scripts work fast and flawlesly on Windows now (but of course the fastest way is to rewrite them as XCGI scripts).
• Now browser-based applications based on SPWS can be installed into directory with name containing spaces.
• Directory for PHP sessions is automatically created on all platforms, its path is specified in phprc file and the directory is cleared on server shutdown.
• Path to PHP extensions is now correctly initialized in phprc, thus PHP extensions can be loaded without any phprc file tweaks.
• PHP PEAR was made available for all platforms.
• Warning about firewall alerts (shown first time SPWS is run) reworded.
• Delay after which CDROM is ejected on server shutdown is now configurable via setting 'ejectcddelay' in httpd.conf.
• Added samples of applications based on SPWS that utilize PHP and MySQL.
• Support for PHP and MySQL was mistakenly disabled on Win9x - now it's there.
• Now PHP really reads configuration file generated by SPWS on startup.

New features in version 1.4

• Added support for specifying interpreter for files with some extension - this allows CGI scripts to be written in any language on all platforms.
• Added support for extensions that extend functionality of SPWS in different ways. Implemented extensions for execution of PHP scripts on all major platforms, implemented extensions for using MySQL on all major platforms, implemented extensions for accessing MySQL and SQLite databases from Perl scripts on on all major platforms. This means that CDROMs with PHP and Perl scripts that access MySQL and SQLite databases residing on CDROM that require nothing on user's computer (including PHP interpreter, MySQL server and DBI drivers for MySQL and SQLite) to be installed - the versions supplied on CDROM will be used! Request an evaluation version to try such CD in action yourself!
• Now preffered location of all configuration files is ../config (relative to location of 'startsite.pl' script) to allow easier upgrades of SPWS.
• MacOS X bundle was fixed, now it works on MacOS X 10.2 and below too.
• Stability was greatly improved.
• Logging of requests and tracing is now done to harddisk if site is running from CDROM.

New features in version 1.3

• Stability of running on Windows computers with incorrect network settings was greatly improved.
• Added support for stopping SPWS and releasing CDROM for all platforms, triggered by user visiting resource with a special name; cd-rom can be ejected at any time on MacOSX platforms even without stopping SPWS.
• Great improvements in XCGI framework implementation; now it's possible to recompile XCGI scripts on each request during debugging stage; XCGI.pm was extended to run XCGI scripts under mod_fastcgi and mod_cgi in Apache without modification.
• A common mistake of CGI programmers - not outputting HTTP headers (mainly Content-Type) from CGI or XCGI scripts - is detected and automatically fixed. This also means that some portion of html code emitted by scripts won't be skipped by browsers (since all text before first empty line would be treated as HTTP header).
• 'runcd.js' was replaced with 'runcd.exe' to avoid possible warnings and alerts from antiviruses on Windows.
• 'runcd-macosx.command' script was replaced with native MacOS X bundle to allow more user-friendly way of runing CD-ROM with Stunnix Perl Web Server on MacOSX.
• Added option to force opening site in Internet Explorer (if installed) on MacOS X, instead of using default browser.
• Message about possible Firewall alert is shown first time Stunnix Perl WebServer is run on Windows (can be switched off).
• Files with spaces in their names now can be served by Stunnix Perl Web Server too.
• Case of file extension is ignored when determining mime type for the served file.
• FAQ was created on Stunnix Perl Web Server.

New features in version 1.2

The most important feature is ability to run HTML::Mason-based sites unchanged under SPWS (of course in mod_perl-like mode, when perl modules are loaded only once). Features in detail:

• Added support for <LocationMatch></LocationMatch> directive (similar to one Apache supports) for applying set of configuration settings to resources with URI matching specified Perl regular expression;
• Added support for "actions" - allowing specific resources to be handled by server-side script (similar to Action/ SetHandler/ AddHandler) couple of directives supported by Apache). This allows sites based on HTML::Mason to be run seamlessly under Stunnix Perl Web Server; a sample of such site is available;
• The output of XCGI and CGI scripts is now entirely accumulated in the memory buffer before sending content to the client on Windows platforms; this was necessary since on very small fraction of Windows boxes previous, unbuffered mode, didn't work at all probably due to some obscure bugs in implementation of networking in Windows.
• Miscellaneous fixes and improvements all over the code were introduced.

New features in version 1.1

This version was a bugfix release.

New features in version 1.0

The version 1.0 was the first public release of Stunnix Perl Web Server.