Using Zope With Apache - The Writing On The Wall
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Now, while this is fairly simple, there's one very important caveat with this method. You won't be able to access the Zope management interface via PCGI, because Apache has trouble passing authentication headers over the CGI "bridge" that's been constructed between Zope and itself.

Luckily, there does exist a solution for this (although it comes with a caveat of its own, discussed on the next page). This solution involves using Apache's URL rewriting engine to artificially pass the authorization credentials to Zope over CGI.

In order to do this, first make sure that your Apache build includes support for URL rewriting (you can do this by looking for "mod_rewrite.c" in the output of "httpd -l"). If it does, great - skip the configure-build-install process below and jump straight into configuring the server. If not, you'll need to recompile Apache with support for URL rewriting.

First, untar the Apache distribution to a directory on your system.

$ cd /tmp/sources
$ tar -xzvf apache_1.3.20.tar.gz

Next, configure Apache to activate the URL rewriting module.

$ cd /tmp/sources/apache_1.3.20
$ ./configure --enable-module=rewrite

Compile and install the package.

$ make
$ make install

All done? Now add the following lines to Apache's "httpd.conf" configuration file.

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP:Authorization}  ^(.*)
RewriteRule ^/Zope(.*) /usr/local/apache/cgi-bin/Zope.cgi/$1
[e=HTTP_CGI_AUTHORIZATION:%1,t=application/x-httpd-cgi,l]

This tells the server to use its URL rewriting engine to automatically pass all URLs containing /Zope to the "Zope.cgi" script. Simultaneously, it sets the environment variable HTTP_CGI_AUTHORIZATION to reflect the current authentication status, thereby (hopefully) solving the authentication problem.

Restart the server, and try accessing the URL again. This time, Apache should successfully pass your authentication credentials to Zope, and you should be able to access the Zope management interface.

If it didn't work, you're not toast yet - flip to the next page for an alternative solution.

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