[Zope] hard-coded pcgi

[Phillip J. Eby]

At 02:50 PM 2/3/99 -0500, Kevin Dangoor wrote:
>On Wed, Feb 03, 1999 at 02:04:10PM -0500, Phillip J. Eby wrote: 
>,-----
>| Oops, that was unclear.  I meant to say that if your host gives you your
>| own ID, *and* executes CGI under that ID, then you have nothing else to do
>| except keep permissions straight.
>
>Ahh! That's ideal! Does someone out there set it up like that?

Hiway, RapidSite, BellSouth, BellAtlantic, Ameritech, GTE (when they launch
gte-hosting.net or .com or whatever it is), as well as numerous
private-label hosting providers who are affiliated with one of the above
companies but not disclosing their relationship.  If you're curious whether
a particular hosting service is on the platform that supports this, just
check to see if the server is "Rapidsite/Apa" using the NetCraft "What
server does that site run?" page.  

The "Rapidsite/Apa" server type is the fourth most popular (by domains
served) web server on the 'net, right after vanilla Apache, IIS, and
Netscape Enterprise.  Its current market share is about half that of NS
Enterprise, with over 86,000 to Netscape's 171,000.  Given that there are
no real environment standards for shared hosting with other server types,
RS/Apa is arguably *the* dominant shared hosting platform in existence
right now, if you consider the platform to be a combination of the server,
the installed software, directory structures, hardware configurations, user
control panel, etc.


>I think the potential is great that there will be people out there 
>who want to use Zope on a server they don't control... and it seems like
>PCGI is the most efficient way to do that. I think there will be many
>scenarios in which PCGI is not necessary (or even desirable). However,
>for people trying to serve up their web pages for $30/month (or whatever)
>PCGI seems like the best route...

Except for the RS/Apa platform, where PCGI presents process-start problems
that FastCGI doesn't.  On the RS/Apa platform, the cgi-fcgi wrapper is
available, and all CGI's execute as the correct user ID to begin with, so
the need for a setuid wrapper is eliminated.  And some hosting brands that
use the RS/Apa platform offer hosting with CGI for as little as $25/month.

Now all I've got to do is get the engineers and sysadmins for the RS/Apa
platform to approve Zope as a supported LRP on the platform...  but that's
another story.  :)