Apache HTTP Server Version 2.0

SSL/TLS Strong Encryption: Compatibility

Here we talk about backward compatibility to other SSL solutions. As you perhaps know, mod_ssl is not the only existing SSL solution for Apache. Actually there are four additional major products available on the market: Ben Laurie's freely available Apache-SSL (from where mod_ssl were originally derived in 1998), RedHat's commercial Secure Web Server (which is based on mod_ssl), Covalent's commercial Raven SSL Module (also based on mod_ssl) and finally C2Net's commercial product Stronghold (based on a different evolution branch named Sioux up to Stronghold 2.x and based on mod_ssl since Stronghold 3.x).

The idea in mod_ssl is mainly the following: because mod_ssl provides mostly a superset of the functionality of all other solutions we can easily provide backward compatibility for most of the cases. Actually there are three compatibility areas we currently address: configuration directives, environment variables and custom log functions.

• Configuration Directives
• Environment Variables
• Custom Log Functions

Configuration Directives

For backward compatibility to the configuration directives of other SSL solutions we do an on-the-fly mapping: directives which have a direct counterpart in mod_ssl are mapped silently while other directives lead to a warning message in the logfiles. The currently implemented directive mapping is listed in Table 1. Currently full backward compatibilty is provided only for Apache-SSL 1.x and mod_ssl 2.0.x. Compatibility to Sioux 1.x and Stronghold 2.x is only partial because of special functionality in these interfaces which mod_ssl (still) doesn't provide.

Environment Variables

When you use ``SSLOptions +CompatEnvVars'' additional environment variables are generated. They all correspond to existing official mod_ssl variables. The currently implemented variable derivation is listed in Table 2.

Custom Log Functions

When mod_ssl is built into Apache or at least loaded (under DSO situation) additional functions exist for the Custom Log Format of mod_log_config as documented in the Reference Chapter. Beside the ``%{varname}x'' eXtension format function which can be used to expand any variables provided by any module, an additional Cryptography ``%{name}c'' cryptography format function exists for backward compatibility. The currently implemented function calls are listed in Table 3.

Apache HTTP Server Version 2.0