Re: [naviserver-devel] New nsproxy module

[Stephen D. <sd...@gm...>]

This is almost a Fast CGI module.  Differences are this uses pipes,
while Fast CGI uses sockets (although the code mentions a move to
sockets).  Fast CGI produces a complete response for the browser,
where as this returns a script result to the calling proc.  But the
differences are small.

I'm not sure 'proxy' is the best name for this, bundled with a web
server as it is...



On 5/13/06, Zoran Vasiljevic <zv...@ar...> wrote:
> Hi!
>
> I have concluded the work of getting the nsproxy module
> from the AOLserver repository into ours.
>
> There have been *numerous* changes and improvements to the
> initial code. See ChangeLog for more details.
> There is also a test-suite and a man-page written in doctools.
> All is under the nsproxy directory which is new so you may
> need to checkout your sandbox.
>
> To get a html or nroff file from ns_proxy.man, please see
> the docs/src/README.doc file.
>
> The sample-config.tcl now includes the nsproxy module.
> Also the test server used for "make test" loads and
> exercises the module. As of my experience, it works fine
> on Mac OSX, Linux and Solaris OS'es.
>
> Please checkoout the new nsproxy and tell me if you get
> any problems with it. We plan to deploy it in one of the next
> releases of our product. Our main motivation to work on that
> was the ability to execute Tcl code in a controllable manner
> outside the server and under different user/group than
> the server itself. Our app runs the nsd as root but at some
> places we need to execute some Tcl code as different user.
> Now, under Unix threading model it is not possible to "impersonate"
> a thread, which is possible only under Windows. For Unix we need
> to get the code executed in a different process, hence I was very
> pleased to see Jim adding this nsproxy module to AOLserver.
> I believe this was just a small rewrite of the db-proxy module.
> But it is in itself a very helpful thing for us. It will hopefully
> be of use for the rest of the Naviserver users.
>
>
> Off-topic:
> At this point it is clear that we need to invest more time in
> getting the docs written. We now have so much new functionality
> built into the server that I start loosing the overview.
> I would encourage everybody to look into the files in doctools
> provided so far and start adding content. In one of the next
> days I will add a template page for each Tcl-API command under
> the docs/src.
>
> Cheers
> Zoran