5 ms·

You mean the point that "you could have set up a web server in 2000 and it could still be running today, working perfectly well" Try to setup a windows 98 mach

You mean the point that "you could have set up a web server in 2000 and it could still be running today, working perfectly well" Try to setup a windows 98 machine as a web server and see how it goes (Windows XP only came out in 2002). It doesn't do HTTP/1.1 so it's good question whether clients would be able to connect at all.

isabelc 6y ago
Windows XP came out in 2001.
morganvachon 6y ago
> Try to setup a windows 98 machine as a web server and see how it goes Windows 98 was a client OS, it was never intended for this. A proper test would be Windows NT 4.0 Server. Or more realistically for the time frame, Solaris 7 or 8.
- anthk 6y ago
  W98 had a simple HTTP home server available for install, as did BeOS I think. Nothing comparable to Apache/IIS, but it was a thing. Obviously forget about any security.
- snowwrestler 6y ago
  Any web server software set up in 2000 and still running today unpatched could be pwned quickly. Including and especially NT 4.0. When you're running a server, TLS is not the only service you are dependent on; you're also dependent on security updates. If they're not backported, you'll need to make version upgrades. Arguably it's better to think of every piece of software running on a server like it's a service, to maintain security and performance in an Internet full of hostile actors. I don't even understand the mindset of wanting to run a live server on ancient software, aside from doing it as a hobby. In which case, it's pretty typical for such hobbies to require extra work and care. Driving around in a car from 1940s takes more maintenance work, and is less safe, than a modern car, and everyone gets that.
  - morganvachon 6y ago
    I think you misunderstood my comment, I'm not advocating doing this. I was simply correcting the person above me who appears to be under the impression that web servers in the 90s ran on a client OS.
klyrs 6y ago
Come, now. In '98 I was writing cgi-bin scripts in perl & c serving websites over apache; by 2000 I was on LAMP which was becoming a de-facto standard web stack. Of course, I was rolling my own query sanitizers, which was the style at the time; and my php.ini did allow GET/POST to inject global variables. Not to mention CVEs discovered between now and then. So I wouldn't want that server from year 2000 to stay running untouched, but win98 is a strawman.
- user5994461 6y ago
  Incidentally, in 2018 I decommissioned the last perl scripts in the largest US bank, originally written decade(s) ago and handling billions per day (if not trillions). Could have been yours ;)
aasasd 6y ago
> Try to setup a windows 98 machine as a web server Just so you know, Windows 2000 is vastly more stable than the 9x branch and is perfectly usable, so you should upgrade.
- klyrs 6y ago
  Good point! Win2k was built on the NT kernel and probably would have been "fine" as a webserver.

isabelc 6y ago

Windows XP came out in 2001.

morganvachon 6y ago

> Try to setup a windows 98 machine as a web server and see how it goes Windows 98 was a client OS, it was never intended for this. A proper test would be Windows NT 4.0 Server. Or more realistically for the time frame, Solaris 7 or 8.

anthk 6y ago
W98 had a simple HTTP home server available for install, as did BeOS I think. Nothing comparable to Apache/IIS, but it was a thing. Obviously forget about any security.
snowwrestler 6y ago
Any web server software set up in 2000 and still running today unpatched could be pwned quickly. Including and especially NT 4.0. When you're running a server, TLS is not the only service you are dependent on; you're also dependent on security updates. If they're not backported, you'll need to make version upgrades. Arguably it's better to think of every piece of software running on a server like it's a service, to maintain security and performance in an Internet full of hostile actors. I don't even understand the mindset of wanting to run a live server on ancient software, aside from doing it as a hobby. In which case, it's pretty typical for such hobbies to require extra work and care. Driving around in a car from 1940s takes more maintenance work, and is less safe, than a modern car, and everyone gets that.
- morganvachon 6y ago
  I think you misunderstood my comment, I'm not advocating doing this. I was simply correcting the person above me who appears to be under the impression that web servers in the 90s ran on a client OS.

klyrs 6y ago

Come, now. In '98 I was writing cgi-bin scripts in perl & c serving websites over apache; by 2000 I was on LAMP which was becoming a de-facto standard web stack. Of course, I was rolling my own query sanitizers, which was the style at the time; and my php.ini did allow GET/POST to inject global variables. Not to mention CVEs discovered between now and then. So I wouldn't want that server from year 2000 to stay running untouched, but win98 is a strawman.

user5994461 6y ago
Incidentally, in 2018 I decommissioned the last perl scripts in the largest US bank, originally written decade(s) ago and handling billions per day (if not trillions). Could have been yours ;)

aasasd 6y ago

> Try to setup a windows 98 machine as a web server Just so you know, Windows 2000 is vastly more stable than the 9x branch and is perfectly usable, so you should upgrade.

klyrs 6y ago
Good point! Win2k was built on the NT kernel and probably would have been "fine" as a webserver.