Acknowledgments

Originally, each recipe was going to be individually attributed, but that turned out to be logistically impossible.

Many people have helped us during the writing of this book, by posing a problem, providing a solution, proofreading, reviewing, editing, or just (!) providing moral support. This multitude, to each of whom we are profoundly grateful, includes Nat Torkington (our project editor and demonstrator of Herculean feats of patience), Sharco and Guy- from #apache on irc.freenode.net, Mads Toftum, Morbus Iff (known to the FBI under the alias Kevin Hemenway), and Andy Holman.

Ken Coar

I dedicate this book to my father, Richard J. Coar, for all the various kinds of support he has provided over the years.

My sincere thanks go out to the crew at O'Reilly, including Paula and Nat, who apparently never gave up hope regardless of how many deadlines whooshed past unmet. Thanks also to the WriterBase Authors Support Group and Cabal mailing lists, whereon much balm and advice was offered. Our technical reviewers Morbus and Quasi provided much excellent feedback and helped make this a better book. The VMware software package was very useful, and I'm grateful to its makers for their help and support.

The people who have worked on the Apache web server documentation, and the people who develop the software itself, get a big note of thanks, too; without the former, collating a lot of the information in this book would have been a whole lot more difficult, and without the latter, the book wouldn't have happened at all.

The users of the software, whose frequently challenging questions populate the mailing lists, the IRC channels, and our inboxes, deserve thanks for all the inspiration they unwittingly provided for the recipes in this book.

But foremost among those to whom I owe gratitude is my significantly better half, Cathy, without whose patience, support, and constructive criticism I would never have achieved what I have.

Rich Bowen

I dedicate this book to Sarah, who is the motivation for all the important things I do.

While it would be impossible to adequately thank all the folks who made this book possible, there are some people, in addition to those already mentioned, that I'd like to especially thank.

A huge thank you to our technical reviewers. You created a huge quantity of additional work for us, made our lives miserable, and made the book late. I don't think I've ever had such a thorough tech review, and the comments that you made served to make this a much better book than it otherwise would have been. Without quasi, large parts of the book would have been significantly less complete—and less correct. And Morbus gave the entire project the sort of surreal, other-worldly aura that you expect from...well, from Morbus. Thank you both and to the many other people who made various remarks about what we'd written.

To my wonderful family, thank you all. You have helped me through a very difficult time, and shown more love, patience, and acceptance than I deserve. Mom and Dad, I love you. Ruth, you have given me the courage to plough on. Andy, you are my hero.

Thanks to the folks on the Apache web server documentation project. The Apache documentation is some of the best in the world of free software. Thanks to the dedication and attention to detail.

To the folks on irc.freenode.net, you are the ones who made this book happen. The recipes in this book are answers to questions that you asked, refined over time by dozens and dozens of people who asked them again and again and again.

And, finally, thanks to the members of the Geocachers of Central Kentucky (http://www.geocky.org/) for getting me hooked on Geocaching, and placing the caches around the area, giving me something to go out and do when my sanity was stretched a little thin.