naviserver-devel Mailing List for NaviServer (Page 9)

SourceForge Headquarters 1320 Columbia Street Suite 310 San Diego, CA 92101 +1 (858) 422-6466

Dear all,

I am glad to announce that the release of NaviServer 4.99.25 is
available at SourceForge [1].  This release is mostly a bug-fix
release. The forthcoming version 5.0 of NaviServer will contain
several new features omitted in this bug-fix branch. In case, you are
building NaviServer from the Bitbucket repository, please note that
the release 4.99.25 is in the branch release/4.99 (bug fix branch for
the NaviServer 4.99 family). New development happens in the "main"
branch of the repository, leading to NaviServer 5.*.

See below for a summary of the changes.

Many thanks to the contributors of this release:

      Andrew Piskorski
      Antonio Pisano
      Brian Fenton
      Gustaf Neumann
      Hector Romojaro
      Joe Oldak
      Khy Huang
      Oleg Oleinick
      Zoran Vasiljevic

All the best!

-gustaf neumann

[1] https://sourceforge.net/projects/naviserver/files/naviserver/4.99.25/

=======================================
NaviServer 4.99.25, released 2023-05-01
=======================================

  132 files changed, 3957 insertions(+), 2068 deletions(-)

New Features:
-------------

  - Added meta-information to configuration values

    NaviServer can now report, what configuration values provided in
    the configuration file were actually used, what their default
    values are, and whether these values were specified or not (using
    the default values). With this information, administration
    (e.g. migration) becomes easier. The NaviServer module "nsstats"
    shows this meta information via the web interface.

    This functionality is provided via the new option "-filter" for the
    command "ns_configsection ... section". When the "-filter" option
    is used, different kinds of information about the parameters is
    returned from the specified section.

     "-filter unread":

         Returns the parameters, which were set during configuration (i.e.,
         in the configuration file) but which were not read in the startup
         phase of the server. This option is useful to determine
         e.g. typographical errors of specified parameter names.

     "-filter defaulted":

         Returns the parameters, from which the default values were read
         (i.e., which were not explicitly set)

     "-filter defaults":

         Returns the defaults of the parameter. This is useful for
         contrasting the actual values with the default values for
         Parameters, e.g. in a web based interface.

  - ns_set reform (per default deactivated in 4.99, but activated in 5.*)

    The classical implementation for ns_sets uses separately malloced
    storage for every attribute name and attribute value. So, e.g., for
    1000 ns_sets with 20 members each, this means 1,000*20*2 = 40,000
    malloc/free operations, e.g., for a single db query! Although the
    malloc implementations have improved over the years, these will
    require many lock operations, especially under load, where many
    threads might perform many concurrent malloc operations. One other
    consequence is that the allocated memory will be scattered over
    address space, which has bad implications for CPU caching.

    The new implementation uses for one "ns_set" a single Tcl_DString
    keeping all attribute names and attribute values. This reduces the
    malloc operations and improves memory locality, such that cache
    hits will improve.

    One caveat of this change is that modules using "ns_set" have to be
    recompiled, since the full C-level data structure of the "ns_set"
    is exposed. Therefore, adding a member causes a binary
    incompatibility. One other potential problem is that C-level
    modules using the Ns_Set* API have to make sure that long-living
    string values are copied (this was necessary before as well, but
    was in many cases no problem, when the "ns_sets" were seldom
    updated).

    For high compatibility, this feature is deactivated per default in
    the 4.99.* series and can be activated by setting the compile-time
    C macro "NS_SET_DSTRING".

API changes:
------------

    API extensions:
     - Provide a new interface ending with *Sz to provide string sizes.
       This reduces the need of strlen() operations.
       * Ns_SetCreateSz()
       * Ns_SetIUpdateSz()
       * Ns_SetPutSz()
       * Ns_SetPutValueSz()
       * Ns_SetUpdateSz()

     - New API calls for "ns_set" reform
       * Ns_SetClearValues(): clear the values for all keys
       * Ns_SetDataPrealloc(): creating ns_sets with preallocated values
         to avoid resize operations
       * NsSetResize()
       * NsHeaderSetGet()

     - Ns_ConfigSet(const char *section, const char *key, const char *name)
       The last argument is new and allows one to create named sets
       (previously, all such sets were unnamed)

     - NsHexPrint(): Print the potentially binary content of a buffer
       in human-readable form.

     - Ns_RelativeTime(Ns_Time *relTimePtr, Ns_Time *timePtr)
       This call implements the inverse operation of Ns_AbsoluteTime(),
       and is used mostly to make debug messages eye-friendly.

Performance Improvements:
-------------------------

  - Replaced malloc operation per log entry by thread local variable in
    system log implementation.

  - When NaviServer 4.99.25 is compiled with NS_SET_DSTRING supportm
    the following preliminary performance results were measured from
    the "ns_set" reform (see above).  The tests were performed on
    openacs.org (Xeon Gold 6226R CPU @ 2.90GHz, 32 cores,
    hyper-threading enabled). The test executes the SQL query

         select * from acs_objects limit 1000

    100 times in sequence. This test is run in 1 to 30 concurrent
    threads. With 30 threads, 3mio tuples are retrieved, and 72 mio
    malloc/free operations are needed alone for the retrieved values.

    Before (classical ns_set with many mallocs):

         threads 1 total 4606.787 ms avg 3285.25 ms
         threads 5 total 4595.358 ms avg 3493.07 ms
         threads 10 total 4804.193 ms avg 3755.93 ms
         threads 20 total 6279.524 ms avg 4569.16 ms
         threads 30 total 8966.427 ms avg 6618.58 ms

    After reform (using common Tcl_DString per tuple):

         threads 1 total 4524.645 ms avg 3242.54 ms
         threads 5 total 4251.266 ms avg 3450.09 ms
         threads 10 total 4656.795 ms avg 3665.31 ms
         threads 20 total 5934.105 ms avg 4671.38 ms
         threads 30 total 7384.591 ms avg 5642.76 ms

    To summarize, the improvement increases under higher load (with
    more parallel threads). E.g., with 30 threads, the total time
    improved by 17%.... leading also to a smaller RSS. These tests were
    not performed under "clinical" conditions.

    The new Tcl API call "ns_set size" can be used to pre-allocate
    larger ns_sets, such that the usual Tcl_DString growing policy does
    not kick in, reducing further realloc() operations.

Bug Fixes:
----------

  - Fixed potential crash in "ns_accesslog extendedheaders XXXX".
    Setting extended headers via configuration file was correct, but
    changing it dynamically via "ns_accesslog extendedheaders .." was
    broken. (Issuehttps://sourceforge.net/p/naviserver/bugs/91/)

  - "ns_conn location": Fixed potential race condition

     It was possible that "ns_conn location" could return inconsistent
     results in a single request, when the underlying sockPtr was
     aggressively reused. Now, the value of the location member is
     copied to the connection structure instead of being shared with
     the socket structure (as before).

  - "ns_cache_eval -force": Fixed potential race condition

     There was a problem with "ns_cache_eval -force", where the system
     relied on the existence of a pre-existing entry, but in case the
     entry was flushed in the meantime problems a crash might have
     happened. Now the value during the "-force" call is cleared exactly
     like in the case of an unset operation. The null-value operations
     are already protected until these are finished in various places
     in the code.

  - "ns_socknread": Fix potentially wrong result for buffered channels

  - Bug fixes for problems showing up under MS Windows:

     * Make sure that the output variable of Ns_ObjvIndex() is always an
       integer. Previously, the output variable was in two places a
       character variable, causing crashes under MS Windows.

     * Handle incompatibility in setlocale() under MS Windows.  Under
       MS Windows, later calls to setlocale() overwrite the string
       returned by former calls. So, it is necessary to copy of the
       returned string of a setlocale() call under MS Windows.

     * Handling linking problems: MS Windows requires explicit handling
       when importing symbols from .dll files (Ns_LogSqlDebug,
       NS_intTypePtr)

     * Pass error codes from low-level function SockRecv() and
       SockSend() via variables.  This change makes sure the real error
       code (immediately after the I/O operation) is passed to the
       caller to avoid missed error cases and weird error message
       (e.g. under windows).

  - Bug fixes for ADP parser:

     * Support for greater than sign ">" inside attribute values.

       Previously, NaviServer determined the terminating end-of-tag
       character as literally the first greater than sign, no matter if
       this was used as attribute values between single or double
       quotes.

       The new version supports such values, since the "Living Standard
       of HTML" [1] allows the use of less than "<" and greater than
       ">" signs inside attribute values as long these are between
       single or double quotes.  The guide [2] just recommends using
       character escapes for "<", ">" and "&".

       [1]https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/syntax.html#syntax-attribute-value
       [2]https://www.w3.org/International/questions/qa-escapes

       This problem was reported by Wolfgang Winkler

     * Clear ADP flags in case of errors (this error was present for
       many years)

       Previously, The following ADP page could lead to a full
       breakdown of the server, since the error states of the server
       were never cleared, and subsequent requests served be the same
       interpreter could lead to the old error states.

       Many thanks to Oleg Oleinick for reporting and the great test
       cases.

  - Provide better HTTP status code for early errors: When the driver
    terminates already a request, it might be the case that the error
    flags were not read out. In such cases, we provide now more
    specific status codes rather than 400.

  - ns_http:

    * Improved robustness with domain names resolving against many IP
      addresses: When a domain name is resolved against many IP
      addresses, and all these IP addresses block (connect returns "in
      progress") then the old code might have looped infinitely. Now
      the code respects the provided timeout (default set to 5s) per
      resolved IP address.

      Many thanks to Joe Oldak for pointing out the problem and
      leading us to the solution.

    * Fixed timeout handling during TLS handshake: This problem could
      appear, when the TCP connection to a server succeeded quickly,
      but the TLS handshake was taking a long time, without a raising
      a timeout exception, although the timeout time has expired.

  - Set the default server before the init-scripts is called to make it
    accessible from there

  - Provide compatibility between in-memory and file-based form-data
    handling for invalid characters: Since the file based
    implementation uses a fallback-charset of iso8859-1 when parsing
    form data in POST requests (in order to be able to extract
    "_charset_" data), the in-memory based variant does now the
    same. The decision of which parser is used is taken based on the
    size of the form data.... and should therefore be consistent.

  - nscp: Fixed problem, when the nscp module is activated but no
    "users" section is specified. Many thanks to Andrew Piskorski for
    reporting the problem.

  - Security Improvement: Added protection against sneaking in fake
    NAME.tmpfile entries into form fields, when performing file upload
    operations.

Documentation improvements:
---------------------------

  - Improved the following man pages:

        doc/src/manual/adp-overview.man
        doc/src/manual/tcl-lib-nstrace.man
        doc/src/naviserver/commandlist.man
        doc/src/naviserver/ns_adp.man
        doc/src/naviserver/ns_adp_ctl.man
        doc/src/naviserver/ns_config.man
        doc/src/naviserver/ns_conn.man
        doc/src/naviserver/ns_connchan.man
        doc/src/naviserver/ns_cookie.man
        doc/src/naviserver/ns_crypto.man
        doc/src/naviserver/ns_http.man
        doc/src/naviserver/ns_ictl.man
        doc/src/naviserver/ns_locationproc.man
        doc/src/naviserver/ns_parsehostport.man
        doc/src/naviserver/ns_return.man
        doc/src/naviserver/ns_set.man
        doc/src/naviserver/ns_setprivileges.man

Configuration Files:
--------------------

  - New feature for the sample configuration file openacs-config.tcl

    The following variables (with prefix oacs_) can be taken from the
    shell variables. This makes it easier to run similar variants of
    NaviServer instances from a single configuration file, while
    providing variables from the command line. This is e.g. useful for
    Docker or cluster setups.

        CookieNamespace
        bindir
        cachingmode
        db_host
        db_name
        db_port
        db_user
        homedir
        hostname
        httpport
        httpsport
        ipaddress
        logroot
        nscpport
        server
        serverroot
        smtpdport

    One can use e.g.the following command to change some ports and the
    log file during startup

     oacs_httpport=8000 oacs_httpsport=8443 oacs_smtpdport=2526 \
         oacs_logroot=/var/www/XXXX/log-node1/ \
         /usr/local/ns/bin/nsd -t /var/www/XXXX/etc/openacs-config.tcl ...

    - further updates for openacs-config.tcl:
       * Added sample nssmtpd configuration
       * Added placeholder for ClusterSecret
       * Reflect recent Oracle requirements (tested with Oracle 19c)
       * Added documentation for "StaticCSP", "CookieNamespace",
         "NsShutdownWithNonZeroExitCode", "LogIncludeUserId"

    - Updated all sample configuration files

Code Changes:
-------------

  - Added and updated predefined MIME types based on
     https://www.iana.org/assignments/media-types/media-types.xhtml

  - Added compile time macro NS_VERBOSE_MALLOC to identify frequent
    *alloc operations

  - Print version of zlib during startup

  - OpenSSL maintenance:

     * Improved robustness for OCSP with OpenSSL 3.*

       The previous version crashed with OpenSSL 3.*, when OCSP was
       tried on self-signed certificates. Aside of the fact that OCSP
       does not make sense for self-signed certificates, the server
       should not crash in such situations.

     * Fixed ns_crypto::aead::encrypt/decrypt test under OpenSSL 1.1.1
       (as shipped per default, e.g. on Ubuntu 18.04.4)

       In short, the problem was that with this version of OpenSSL,
       setting empty additional authenticated data (AAD) behaved
       differently from other versions, namely it was clearing
       incorrectly (forgetting) the information that the initialization
       vector (IV) was already set. An upgrade of OpenSSL fixed the
       problem. However, with these changes, also the stock version of
       OpenSSL can be used. As a byproduct, better error messages are
       now produced, the code received more cleanup (e.g. explicit
       initialization, etc.)

  - Automated testing:

     * Setup if Bitbucket + GitHub pipelines for automated regression
       testing with multiple versions of components

       For NaviServer 4.99 the current setup performs tests with gcc-10
       + gcc-11, Tcl 8.6.13 + 8.7a5, NSF 2.4,0 + 2.4.0, tDOM 0.9.1 +
       0.9.3, extra modules: nsdbpg nsdbi nsdbipg nsudp nscoap nssmtpd.

       https://github.com/nm-wu/naviserver-mirror/actions

     * Improved robustness of regression test when running with the
       docker networking setup

     * Force nonzero exit code when regression test fails

     * Added parameter "-timeout" to call of regression test cases
       Previously, the timeout was hard-wired to 3 seconds. One can now
       call a test with e.g. "nstest::http -timeout 1s ... GET ..."

     * adp_compress.test: removed trailing newline to ease
       cross-platform regression tests

     * Prefer standard Tcl test constraint "macOrUnix" over own solution

     * Extended regression tests with more test cases

  - Code management:
     * Changed name of branch from "master" to "main"

  - Code Cleanup
      * Improved type cleanness
      * Removed deprecated calls to "sprintf"
      * Improved portability for Tcl 8.7* (handling of binary data)

  - Improved comments, fixed typos

Changes in NaviServer Modules:
==============================

  39 files changed, 9658 insertions(+), 1781 deletions(-)

General:
   Adjust to necessary API changes in NaviServer (contains as well
   support for the forthcoming release of NaviServer 5)

nsdbpg:
-------

   - new pg-driver specific command: ns_pg_prepare /sql/

     Return a dict building a prepared statement for the passed-in SQL
     statement. The dict contains the keys "sql" and "args". The
     function is used by e.g. OpenACS to generate prepared statements
     from SQL commands with bind variables.

   - Raise exception when a value for a bind variable contains a NUL character.
     This value is explicitly forbidden in text strings passed to PostgreSQL.

   - Let "ns_pg" report available subcommands even when handle is not
     specified.  This makes the command compatible with the "icanuse"
     feature in OpenACS.

nsstats:
--------

   - HTTP client log analysis:
      * Provide charts for performance (using highcharts via CDN)
      * Provide charts on request frequency (using highcharts via CDN)
      * Provide a summary table for HTTP client requests
      * Improved robustness against invalid URLs (containing unescaped
        spaces)
      * Added support for selection of different HTTP client log files
        via web interface

   - "Process" page:
       * Added percentage of request distribution over connection pools
       * Added information about the connected client
       * Added more detailed version information

   - Added cache configuration to output when looking at a single cache

   - Improved "log file" analysis
     * Automated stripping of color codes

     * Added filter option. The filter can be used to grep for (ID)
       strings in both the system and access logs, providing a summary
       for the traces of a request in the access log and system log on
       a single place.

   - Added default and usage information to "Config Parameters" page

nsoracle:
---------

   - Fixed bug when streaming LOB content to connection. The old code
     did not distinguish between binary and non-binary content.  This
     bug was discussed in
     https://openacs.org/forums/message-view?message_id=5693661

     Bumped version number to 2.9

- switched to plain Debug handling for debugging the driver

     The handling of Ns_LogSqlDebug is performed inside nsdb, including
     also the printout of (long) SQL statements. Previously, the driver
     was too chatty when Debug(sql) was turned on.

   - Added support for output columns of type SQLT_TIMESTAMP or SQLT_TIMESTAMP_TZ

     This change fixes a bug, where SQL queries of the form

          SELECT TO_TIMESTAMP(sysdate) FROM dual

     lead to errors for the form:

          Database operation "getrow" failed (exception 1406, "nsoracle.c:3659:Ns_OracleGetRow:
          error in `OCIStmtFetch ()': ORA-01406: fetched column value was truncated

     The driver needs for several output types special rules, where the
     timestamp cases were not supported so far. It is also recommended
     to set the according environment variables specifying the output
     format in the configuration server of NaviServer, such as e.g.

         set ::env(NLS_TIMESTAMP_FORMAT) "YYYY-MM-DD HH24:MI:SS.FF6"
         set ::env(NLS_TIMESTAMP_TZ_FORMAT) "YYYY-MM-DD HH24:MI:SS.FF6 TZH:TZM"

     For testing in you local Oracle installation, you might test the
     output formats (and the required sizes with the following snippet
     for sqlplus:

        COLUMN localtimestamp format a40
        COLUMN systimestamp format a40
        COLUMN ts_bytes format a80

        alter session set nls_timestamp_format='YYYY-MM-DD HH24:MI:SS.FF6';
        select localtimestamp, length(localtimestamp), dump(localtimestamp) ts_bytes from dual;

        alter session set nls_timestamp_tz_format='YYYY-MM-DD HH24:MI:SS.FF6 TZH:TZM';
        select systimestamp, length(systimestamp), dump(systimestamp) ts_bytes from dual;

        alter session set nls_timestamp_tz_format='YYYY-MM-DD HH24:MI:SS.FF6 TZR';
        select systimestamp, length(systimestamp), dump(systimestamp) ts_bytes from dual;

letsencrypt:
------------

   - Added option to produce certificates with ECDSA:

     Prior to this change, all certificates were using RSA keys.
     Since a while, keys based on elliptic curves became the preference
     of letsencrypt.

nsshell:
--------

    - Fixed a bug in "ns_conn" emulation, when the "kernel" was not correctly identified

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naviserver-devel Mailing List for NaviServer (Page 9)

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