Merging Linux and Java on the Server Side
vqServer: A Truly Personal Server
Kevin Reichard
Saturday, December 11, 1999 01:53:24 PM
A truly personal Web server,
vqServer is designed
for individuals and smaller companies wishing to serve Web pages from a modest
PC.
Installation is a matter of unzipping the downloaded file (you'll need an
unzip program with Linux; the gzip command found in most Linux distributions
will work), placing the files in the correct locations, and then launching
vqServer from the Java interpreter. When you're finished, you've actually
installed two servers: an HTTP server on port 80 and an administration server
on port 9090.
Administering vqServer is a simple affair, performed by connecting your Web
browser to the Control Centre. This application, which is password protected,
oversees file locations, aliases, logfiles, hit, authorized
users, access control lists, file types, sessions, general session settings,
the TCP/IP port where the server listens for HTTP requests (the default is
8080) and more. Also, you can set the minimum and maximum number of threads
the server keeps available for handling requests; when you set a minimum number
of threads you're also enabling thread caching, which improves performance by
decreasing the overhead associated with creating, maintaining, and destroying
threads. With this you can shut down a server, abort all HTTP connections
(useful when there are errant Java servlets and CGI scripts) or stop all
loaded servlets.
The file-handling capabilities in vqServer are noteworthy. Instead of
forcing files into a public directory, vqServer uses aliases
to map requests to actual filenames. The noteworthy aspect to this is that you
can associate actions with specific filenames: to send the file, to redirect a
request to another location, to run a Java servlet or run a CGI script.
In addition, aliases control who has access to a file, which brings us to a
discussion of vqServer's security features. vqServer manages access from a list
of users and passwords, as well as access control lists. When you associate an
alias with an access control list, only those users listed in the access
control list have access to the file.
vqServer keeps track of users on a detailed level: when the users were
first registered and the last time they accessed your Web server, what ACLs are
associated with the user and more.
The emphasis in vqServer, not surprisingly, is on Java servlets, which can
be more efficient than CGI scripts. The Control Centre in vqServer is a Java
servlet, and there are a few other example Java servlets included with
vqServer. Since vqServer conforms to version 2.0 of the Sun servlet
specification, there shouldn't be too many problems when running outside
servlets. In addition, vqServer allows CGI scripts to be run.
You won't ever see a large corporate installation of vqServer: it's simply
not the sort of feature-rich product that penetrates a corporate consciousness. But
as a relatively secure Web server for a personal site--say,
running a small Web site from an office or departmental computer,
chiefly for file-sharing purposes--then vqServer is worth checking out.
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