MapServer Running on Alpha

[Paul G. Allen]

OK, I've finally got the MapServer running on my Alpha. It took a little doing
as follows:

1. I had to fix a few places in the code where integers were cast to pointers
and vice versa. Alpha pointers are 64 bit, integers are 32 bit, whereas on x86
they are both 32 bit. This turned out to be trivial (fortunately there weren't
too many cases of this :)

2. I had to fix the damn egcs compiler. It kept reporting type mismatch errors
with memcpy(), strcpy(), and other such functions. I removed then reloaded the
compiler and all libraries. (one of these days I'll D/L gcc 2.95.1 and try it
out :)

3. Since the Alpha has only a 4GB HDD, and the map data is well over 4GB
uncompressed, I had to create symlinks and mount NFS drives from the K6 to
access the map data.

4. Being new to Apache (and any web server for that matter), I had to figure out
how to make Apache respond to an alternate port (instead of the usual port 80).
The Alpha now responds to 24.5.14.144:3000, with the K6 still at port 80, though
I'm still not sure if my firewall is allowing external access to this port.
Works great internally though, and configuring Apache was actually quite simple
(considering the httpd.conf file has a comment telling exactly how to do this,
and Comanche has a field for it :)

The Alpha is quite a bit faster at making the maps than the K6 is (duh) with the
bottleneck now being the slow 10Mbps ethernet. I really need to upgrade to
either fiber or 100Mbps.

PGA