A86: Re: [OT] school's proxy

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A86: Re: [OT] school's proxy


ISS?  I think you mean IIS, Internet Information Server, which is
Microsoft's web server.  Apache is also a web server.  Version 2 is what
comes with with Windows NT, though you can upgrade to version 4 with the NT
Option Pack.  It might even be free off Microsoft's web site.  Version 5
comes with Windows 2000.

As for which is better, that is a huge debate.  First, if you are running
NT, you had better upgrade to IIS 4 and SP 6 immediately.  There is at least
one bug I know of in SP 5 that allowed one to execute arbitrary code on the
server through malformed HTTP requests.  This was on my universities online
registration system and my work's former employer's web servers.  The latter
of which I would have thought would be up on security, but aparently was
not.

IIS is easier to setup than Apache, assuming you like a point and click
interface.  Apache is nice if you like granular control over everything on
the server, and don't mind learning the config files.  Both can be
frustrating at times.  As for speed, IIS is faster on an NT machine, and
possibly faster than Apache under Linux, although these comparisons are not
exactly equal.  It also depends on the load on the machine and the context
of the requests.  The tests that say IIS is faster usually involve
requesting static HTML pages repeatedly.  Most sites are not static HTML,
but are dynamically generated.  And if it is just static HTML, a caching
proxy server like squid for Linux will equalize the performance.  If the
machine is sufficiently fast and has enough ram, you will more than likely
run out of bandwidth before you hit the limit of the web server's ability to
spit back pages.  This can even hold true for dynamically generated content.
This fact is quite often overlooked.

If reliability is an issue, which it should be for a web server, then Linux
is the better choice for a weaker machine.  You need at least 256 megs of
ram at a minimum for a web server running NT.  IIS and all the associated
services take up a lot of resources.  Linux works out well on machines with
less ram.  It is also usually more stable than NT on a consumer level
machine in a server type situation.  The ACZ server is hosted on an AMD
K6/233 running Debian Linux, and the machine has needed rebooting due to a
lockup.  The only time you should have to reboot Linux is when you install a
new kernal or change the hardware configuration.  The machine also hosts
many other sites.  The web server is of course Apache, and the box has a
full 10mbit pipe to the internet.

Most NT Servers that I have seen need rebooting at least once a week to once
a day, but this cannot necessarily be contributed soley to the OS or IIS.  I
have of people having NT boxes run for months without needing reboots, and
with Windows 2000 being more stable than NT 4 and having the number of
reboot scenarios reduced from around 190 to 7(?), this is a possiblity.
However, I would daresay that these machines are much more buff than any
that could be afforded by the average consumer.

Of course, there are other issues, such as NTFS being a stable, journalling
filesystem, while EXT2 is not journalling.  What this means is that if a
volume gets unmounted uncleanly, such as due to a power failure, there is
less of a chance of data corruption with a journalling file system, because
it should be able to repair itself.  That said, I have never personally seen
a Linux box's file system get corrupted due to being uncleanly mounted, and
I have seen an NT server's file system get corrupted to the point of needing
to be reinstalled, and that was on a SCSI RAID array.  This of course could
just be coincidence, and I am not trying to point anyone to any conclusions.
This is just what I have seen.

As for security, I will not even go into it.  If you want a secure OS, no
matter which one you chose, you will have to fully understand everything
about it.  And no OS is perfect.  Someone will sooner or later find bug or a
hole that you will have to patch.

This is relating completely to NT or Linux as a server OS, not a desktop.
The desktop debate is a completely different issue.

Apologies for the little rant :)

"I had a secure NT server once.  Then someone had to go and plug it back
into the wall."

> Hey guys,
> I know that this is off topic and all, but right now my teacher is using
ISS
> version 2 made by microshit which is some crappy proxy server OS.
> He wants to know if Apache is any better but I have no freakin clue about
> either one of them for the most part and would be very grateful if anybody
> could give me some info about Apache.
> If you have a problem with this email being OT then don't complain like a
> baby, just write to the abuse email address that was stated when you
joined
> the list!


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