Re: POST with Connection: keep-alive

Jonathan Larmour writes:

>I found an interesting problem with squid when submitting a form on a server
>running NCSA httpd 1.4.2.
>
>The client (netscape 4.5) submitted a POST HTTP/1.0 request with the header:
>
>Referer: http://www.camcnty.gov.uk/sub/cambserv/pipemail.htm
>Proxy-Connection: Keep-Alive
>User-Agent: Mozilla/4.5 [en] (X11; I; Linux 2.0.34 i686)
>Host: www.camcnty.gov.uk
>Accept: image/gif, image/x-xbitmap, image/jpeg, image/pjpeg, image/png, */*
>Accept-Encoding: gzip
>Accept-Language: en
>Accept-Charset: iso-8859-1,*,utf-8
>Content-type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded
>Content-length: 86
>
>and when squid forwarded it on, the request became:
>
>POST /cgi-bin/con1_form HTTP/1.0
>Referer: http://www.camcnty.gov.uk/sub/cambserv/pipemail.htm
>User-Agent: Mozilla/4.5 [en] (X11; I; Linux 2.0.34 i686)
>Host: www.camcnty.gov.uk
>Accept: image/gif, image/x-xbitmap, image/jpeg, image/pjpeg, image/png, */*
>Accept-Encoding: gzip
>Accept-Language: en
>Accept-Charset: iso-8859-1,*,utf-8
>Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded
>Content-Length: 86
>Via: 1.0 webcache.cygnus.co.uk:3128 (Squid/2.1.PATCH1)
>X-Forwarded-For: 194.130.39.29
>Cache-Control: max-age=604800
>Connection: keep-alive
>
>The final line is the interesting one. For a POST request, what use would a
>keep-alive have? Why should squid send this?

Because Squid might send another HTTP request to that same server.
Theoretically, connection persistence is entirely unrelated to
request methods.

>The thing is that even after 86 characters (the Content-Length) have been
>sent, the httpd doesn't return a reply. If I remove the "Connection:
>keep-alive", things work as expected.
>
>So whose fault is it? Squid or the NCSA httpd? Probably the latter. But is
>POST a useful thing to use with keep-alive anyway? RFC 2068 hardly mentions
>keep-alive at all, except in 19.7.1 in the context of backwards
>compatibility.
>
>I've got the debug output available if anyone wants other info. The NCSA
>server isn't mine, so I can't look at it.

Does your version have 'persistent_client_posts on|off' option?
If so, try turning it off.

Duane W.
Received on Fri Jan 08 1999 - 16:04:38 MST