Mailing List Archive: [mod_backhand-users] CGI Script Doesn't Get Started

[mod_backhand-users] CGI Script Doesn't Get Started

Mar 13, 2001, 6:27 PM

Post #1 of 3 (454 views)

Hi,

I'm using mod_backhand on a single server in a light weight apache
frontend and with a mod_perl backend. (If I can get this working OK, I'll
be expanding to add additional servers.)

I am having a problem when the method POST is used to send data to the
server. Not always, but frequently, the browser just spins, the cgi never
executes, and so the user is left wondering what to do. Clicking on the
"GO" button again sometimes works. If I change the method to GET in the
html, it works every time. Of course, for good reasons, we want to use
POST, not GET.

Has anyone had this behavior with mod_backhand and come up with a fix?
(Of course, it may not be mod_backhand that is the problem, but we never
had this issue before mod_backhand.) Or do you have any ideas what might
be wrong?

Thanks!

Bob Foster
System Administrator
Dissemination, Inc.
Hotresponse.com
(541) 617-5021
bfoster@hotresponse.com

[mod_backhand-users] CGI Script Doesn't Get Started [ In reply to ]

jesus at omniti

Mar 13, 2001, 6:51 PM

Post #2 of 3 (431 views)

Permalink

Do you notice this from any browser in particular? Does it always happen from
one browser and never from another?

The code that handles this portion of the "plumbing" is relatively small.
Whatever the problem is, it should not be too difficult to fix. It will be
much easier if it can be replicated with a single request on an idle instance.

Bob Foster wrote:
> I am having a problem when the method POST is used to send data to the
> server. Not always, but frequently, the browser just spins, the cgi never
> executes, and so the user is left wondering what to do. Clicking on the
> "GO" button again sometimes works. If I change the method to GET in the
> html, it works every time. Of course, for good reasons, we want to use
> POST, not GET.

--
Theo Schlossnagle
1024D/A8EBCF8F/13BD 8C08 6BE2 629A 527E 2DC2 72C2 AD05 A8EB CF8F
2047R/33131B65/71 F7 95 64 49 76 5D BA 3D 90 B9 9F BE 27 24 E7

[mod_backhand-users] CGI Script Doesn't Get Started [ In reply to ]

jesus at omniti

Mar 17, 2001, 5:48 PM

Post #3 of 3 (432 views)

Permalink

Bob,

Hmm... There are two bugs in the proxying code.

1) If a keep-alive session in the pool is exipred be the remote system and it
is handed to mod_bachand to proxy a request over, the request will hang if
there is POST data.

-- This is fixed in CVS. I will be rolling 1.1.1 very soon. If you could
check this out of CVS and verify that it fixes your problem, that would be
most useful.

2) Spec says that a client can post in a chunked-encoding. mod_backhand
doesn't suppost this.

-- I have been unable to replicate this. Until I can, I don't what to write
the code to handle it becuase I won't be able to verify that it works -- and
it is prett complex.

Bob Foster wrote:
>
> I have this problem with both MSIE 5.5 and Netscape 6.0.
> This is running on a test server so there is no other traffic.

Becuase of this (running on test server with no other traffic), it is
definitely feasible that the bug you are triggerring is (1). So, try the new
CVS version and let me know if it still breaks in the same way.

If it does, can you email me the the HTML source to the page that contain the
POST that causes this behaviour?

There are directions for checking out mod_backhand from CVS on this page:
http://commedia.cnds.jhu.edu/cgi-bin/viewcvs/

"test_project" can be replaced by "mod_backhand" to check out the module. It
is a standard anonymous CVS checkout.

--
Theo Schlossnagle
1024D/A8EBCF8F/13BD 8C08 6BE2 629A 527E 2DC2 72C2 AD05 A8EB CF8F
2047R/33131B65/71 F7 95 64 49 76 5D BA 3D 90 B9 9F BE 27 24 E7