[Fwd: [ale] need advice on adding frontpage ext to Apache]

[michael mcdermott]

Well for one, the unix extentions have a few bugs and quirks, you would have to
install them to find out about that, I don't know how they behave under Linux,
just BSDI. They work "OK" under BSDI.

the main reason that you don't want to do that is that:

they require write access to the conf files for apache

they spawn huge processes, one for every instance of someone using frontpage
about 7M a piece.

they suck up cpu cycles that you could be using for other, more important 
things.

the unix versions are not actually produced by microsoft, but by a third party,
so YMMV with them.

I have seen just frontpage spike a serverload above 200 a few times on a
reasonably stable BSDI system with 380M of memory and 1G of swap with p2-300Mhz
processors running off a 20G raid5 array.


and if you are expected to provide any customer support for them, they are
quirky as hell.


Steven A DuChene wrote:
> 
> We are doing some server replacement here and have convinced the admin folks
> to go with Apache but they insist on adding the frontpage extensions to the
> server "in case" anyone wants to use that for publishing web pages. Several
> of us in the know have a pretty good idea that this is NOT a good thing but
> we would like info or actual evidence to present on why that is.
> 
> So if anyone has addition info we could present on why frontpage extensions
> are a bad idea to put on a Apache/Unix system please let me know.
> --
> Steve DuChene              sad at hpuerca.atl.hp.com               1-800-633-3600
> 
>                The HP North American Response Center, Atlanta
>                   X/CDE/Vue/xterminal/graphics support team
>                     I am an employee of Hewlett-Packard.

-- 
"Of course the void is nothinginess. By knowing things that exist,
 you can know that which does not exist. That is the void."
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