Apache Reverse Proxy changes status code

Question

Background

We have been running an application on JBoss that is exposed to the clients via an Apache Reverse Proxy. We recently introduced "HTTP 429 Too many requests" to slow down high velocity requests.

Problem

However, it seems that apache2 changes the HTTP status code from 429 to 500.

Root cause analysis

Confirmed from JBoss that it sends HTTP 429, by bypassing the proxy, and talking to it directly.

Confirmed from /var/log/apache2/access.log, that apache2 gets HTTP 429

 10.0.0.161 - - [16/Jul/2014:07:27:47 +0000] "POST /the/URL/ HTTP/1.1" 429 1018 "-" "curl/7.36.0" |0/466110|

Curl Client gets 500, somehow.

There's also been a bug filed few years back on Bugzilla #900827. I remember reading that it has been fixed in 2.2.18. Yet, I still face the problem -- which leads me to think there's probably a different problem altogether.

Questions

As I have read elsewhere, Apache might not relay the code perfectly for custom HTTP status codes. But isn't HTTP 429 as a part of additional HTTP status codes RFC, a standard code enough to be recognised and relayed?
Is there something crucial that I am missing here?

^{PS: Since this question is more about HTTP status spec, I asked here. If the community feels its more about apache, please feel free to vote to move the question to Server Fault.}

score 5 · Accepted Answer · answered Sep 04 '14 at 09:53

I just stumbled upon your question because i was once again researching a similar problem, where our Apache Reverse Proxy returned a 500 status code on an ActiveSync Response 449.

I also found the Bugzilla entry you mentioned and the statments that it should have been fixed with version 2.2.18, however we use 2.2.22 and still faced the problem.

After further reading into the comments in the Bugzilla entry which then lead to the apache bug entry #44995. Reading these comments, especially the last one lead me to the believe that the issue, especially with custom error codes without status message has not been fixed in any 2.2.x versions but is included in 2.3/2.4

So we moved on and updated our reverse proxy to a 2.4 version, and to our surprise the error code 449 was correctly passed over by the proxy.

As you didnt mentioned your apache2 version used, i can only guess that an update to 2.4 or 2.3 might be a possible solution for you.

Apache Reverse Proxy changes status code

1 Answers1