Shibboleth Developers

[Scott Cantor <>]

It's a serious mess. See mod_ssl comment below.

I've always used child_init because it's once per process on all platforms, 
but it doesn't allow for failing early enough to avoid
the loop.

Basically, we'd have to code up something like mod_ssl uses, which uses the 
main init hook, and uses counts and ifdefs to figure out
when to run what. I don't think we have time now, but we can look at it later.

For now, I'll see what I can do to the code. I don't see an API call that 
tells Apache to stop trying, but I'll poke around a little
more.

-- Scott

    /*
     *  The initialization phase inside the Apache API is totally bogus.
     *  We actually have three non-trivial problems:
     *
     *  1. Under Unix the API does a 2-round initialization of modules while
     *     under Win32 it doesn't. This means we have to make sure that at
     *     least the pass phrase dialog doesn't occur twice.  We overcome this
     *     problem by using a counter (mc->nInitCount) which has to
     *     survive the init rounds.
     *
     *  2. Between the first and the second round Apache detaches from
     *     the terminal under Unix. This means that our pass phrase dialog
     *     _has_ to be done in the first round and _cannot_ be done in the
     *     second round.
     *
     *  3. When Dynamic Shared Object (DSO) mechanism is used under Unix the
     *     module segment (code & data) gets unloaded and re-loaded between
     *     the first and the second round. This means no global data survives
     *     between first and the second init round. We overcome this by using
     *     an entry ("ssl_module") inside the ap_global_ctx.
     *
     *  The situation as a table:
     *
     *  Unix/static Unix/DSO          Win32     Action Required
     *              (-DSHARED_MODULE) (-DWIN32)
     *  ----------- ----------------- --------- 
-----------------------------------
     *  -           load module       -         -
     *  init        init              init      SSL library init, Pass Phrase 
Dialog
     *  detach      detach            -         -
     *  -           reload module     -         -
     *  init        init              -         SSL library init, mod_ssl init
     *
     *  Ok, now try to solve this totally ugly situation...
     */

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