Xitami

Last updated
Xitami
Developer(s) iMatix Corporation
Initial release1996;23 years ago (1996)
Stable release
2.5c2 / July 24, 2002;16 years ago (2002-07-24)
Preview release
5.0a0 / February 18, 2009;10 years ago (2009-02-18)
Operating system Cross-platform
Type Web server
License BSD-like [1]
Website www.xitami.com

Xitami is a Web and FTP server, originally developed by iMatix Corporation as a free, open-source product from 1996 to 2000. It ran as a single process with a small footprint. It was not as fast as the fastest servers but scaled well. It supported several web application protocols and was very portable. It also had a web interface to configure the web/FTP server.

World Wide Web System of interlinked hypertext documents accessed over the Internet

The World Wide Web (WWW), commonly known as the Web, is an information system where documents and other web resources are identified by Uniform Resource Locators, which may be interlinked by hypertext, and are accessible over the Internet. The resources of the WWW may be accessed by users by a software application called a web browser.

The File Transfer Protocol (FTP) is a standard network protocol used for the transfer of computer files between a client and server on a computer network.

Open-source software software licensed to ensure source code usage rights

Open-source software (OSS) is a type of computer software in which source code is released under a license in which the copyright holder grants users the rights to study, change, and distribute the software to anyone and for any purpose. Open-source software may be developed in a collaborative public manner. Open-source software is a prominent example of open collaboration.

Contents

In 2009, iMatix launched a new version of Xitami, called X5 (Xitami/5).

History

iMatix started the original Xitami server in 1996 as a demonstration of its "SMT" multithreading technology for building protocol servers. The name was chosen at the last minute when the developers realized that their original choice ("Cosmos") had already been taken by another web server that no longer exists. [2] "Xitami" is "iMatix" spelled backwards.

Xitami was featured in an April 1997 article in Dr. Dobb's Journal. [3] The web server attracted people looking for a fast but simple web/FTP server, mainly on Microsoft Windows.

Microsoft Windows is a group of several graphical operating system families, all of which are developed, marketed, and sold by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. Active Windows families include Windows NT and Windows Embedded; these may encompass subfamilies, e.g. Windows Embedded Compact or Windows Server. Defunct Windows families include Windows 9x, Windows Mobile and Windows Phone.

Xitami was designed to be portable, and was ported to Windows, Linux and other Unices, OpenVMS, BeOS, and OS/2. All non-portable functionality was encapsulated in a library layer called SFL (the "standard function library"). SFL was a free and open source project and was used fairly widely in other such projects. In 1999, the Apache web server adopted a similar approach to portability for Apache2, building the Apache Portable Runtime (APR).

Linux Family of free and open-source software operating systems based on the Linux kernel

Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution.

Unix-like operating system that behaves in a manner similar to a Unix system

A Unix-like operating system is one that behaves in a manner similar to a Unix system, while not necessarily conforming to or being certified to any version of the Single UNIX Specification. A Unix-like application is one that behaves like the corresponding Unix command or shell. There is no standard for defining the term, and some difference of opinion is possible as to the degree to which a given operating system or application is "Unix-like".

OpenVMS computer operating system

OpenVMS is a closed-source, proprietary computer operating system for use in general-purpose computing. It is the successor to the VMS Operating System, that was produced by Digital Equipment Corporation, and first released in 1977 for its series of VAX-11 minicomputers. The 11/780 was introduced at DEC's Oct. 25, 1977 annual shareholder's meeting. In the 1990s, it was used for the successor series of DEC Alpha systems. OpenVMS also runs on the HP Itanium-based families of computers. As of 2019, a port to the x86-64 architecture is underway.

The Xitami team continued to add features until mid-2000 when development of the server stopped except for security updates. In 2008 multiple printf vulnerabilities were reported in the final release of Xitami/2.5. [4]

X5

In January 2009 iMatix announced the start of a new Xitami project, version 5, called X5. [5] This uses the latest generation of iMatix's multithreading technology (Base2), making Xitami scalable to multiple cores, while remaining small, and simple. iMatix has stated that it is "designed to handle thousands of connections without difficulty" which makes it ready for long polling, in which client connections remain open for extended durations. Windows binaries for X5 were released in February 2009 and X5 was used for the first time to run the iMatix Live Zyre website. X5 shares the same technical framework as iMatix's OpenAMQ message service.

X5 is written in ANSI C99, using a meta-programming approach called "Model Oriented Programming". [6] X5 was presented at FOSDEM 2009 as consisting of 3,457 lines of meta-meta code. [7] X5 uses APR in place of SFL, and has been run on Windows, Linux, AIX, Solaris, and OpenVMS.

See also

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References

  1. ↑ Xitami License Agreement Archived October 18, 2007, at the Wayback Machine
  2. ↑ Liberetto newsletter Archived June 9, 2009, at the Wayback Machine , December 1996
  3. ↑ A portable multithreaded webserver (Dr. Dobb's Journal, 1 April 1997)
  4. ↑ Security Advisory B013 - Xitami Web Server v2.5c2 Multiple Vulnerabilities Archived October 24, 2008, at the Wayback Machine
  5. ↑ Announcement of Xitami/5 (X5) project Archived February 26, 2009, at the Wayback Machine
  6. ↑ Model oriented programming technology
  7. ↑ FOSDEM 2009 presentation Archived 2009-02-11 at the Wayback Machine
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