I'll use POP3 as my example, although any other service (eg telnet, ssh, FTP, SMTP)
are equally valid.
Having apache run on a non-http port, say port 110 (POP3), could be handy. You could
even have POP3 running elsewhere and use the POP3 module:
o to proxy POP3 requests inside a firewall, or
o to proxy to a POP3 running on a non-standard port (eg 10110), or
o to get POP3 mail from multiple accounts!
Imagine, a custom mod_perl POP3 server which grabs mail from all
your email boxes all over the net.
There are two major stopping points from being able to do this today with
Apache/mod_perl:
[1] POP3 clients do not send HTTP headers. Is there already a
way in mod_perl to get a request before the HEADERS are parsed?
[2] POP3 clients have 'interactive' connections. Is there a way in
apache/mod_perl to read/write more info from a socket without
dropping the connection?
James G Smith wrote:
>
> Matt Sergeant <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> >Would it be possible to have a generic server, like Apache, but not just
> >for HTTP - something that could also serve up NNTP connections, FTP
> >connections, etc. It seems to me at first look this should be possible.
> >
> >As I can see it there's a few key components to Apache:
> >
> >forking tcp/ip server
> >file caching/sending
> >header parsing
> >logging
>
> Sounds a lot like inetd to me, IMHO.
Well, if you are not into performance, you could shut down apache and have a perl
script run every time an access is made to port 80! Obviously, there would be some
benifits to having apache/mod_perl up and running on non-https (eg POP3).
Neil Kandalgaonkar wrote:
>
> Matt Sergeant <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > Am I completely
> >wacko or is this something that potentially could be possible?
>
> Not wacko. Although it may not be desirable, at least in the way you
> envision. Say there's a bug in one of your HTTP mod_perl modules, do you
> want to lose SMTP?
You could have *two* apaches running, one on port 80 and another on port 25 (SMTP).
YOu would probably want to do this considering would could build your apache's very
differently.
Rudy
