Apache internal dummy connection

English Network/Internet
#1

Hallo! I’ve already posted this in a Russian forum section, but had no answer.
Maybe you can help?

My system: openSUSE 11.4 linux (kernel 2.6.37.6-24)
Server is: Apache/2.2.17 (Linux/SUSE) mod_ssl/2.2.17 OpenSSL/1.0.0c PHP/5.3.5
“Name-based” virtual hosts are using.

For a long time I get the following error messages in my Apache logs:

In error_log:
[Sun Nov 03 01:52:58 2013] [error] [client 127.0.0.1] Invalid URI in request OPT
IONS * HTTP/1.0
[Sun Nov 03 01:52:58 2013] [error] [client 127.0.0.1] Invalid URI in request OPT
IONS * HTTP/1.0
[Sun Nov 03 01:52:58 2013] [error] [client 127.0.0.1] Invalid URI in request OPT
IONS * HTTP/1.0
[Sun Nov 03 01:52:58 2013] [error] [client 127.0.0.1] Invalid URI in request OPT
IONS * HTTP/1.0

In access_log:
127.0.0.1 - - [03/Nov/2013:01:52:58 +0400] “OPTIONS * HTTP/1.0” 400 967 “-” “Apa
che/2.2.17 (Linux/SUSE) (internal dummy connection)”
127.0.0.1 - - [03/Nov/2013:01:52:58 +0400] “OPTIONS * HTTP/1.0” 400 967 “-” “Apa
che/2.2.17 (Linux/SUSE) (internal dummy connection)”
127.0.0.1 - - [03/Nov/2013:01:52:58 +0400] “OPTIONS * HTTP/1.0” 400 967 “-” “Apa
che/2.2.17 (Linux/SUSE) (internal dummy connection)”
127.0.0.1 - - [03/Nov/2013:01:52:58 +0400] “OPTIONS * HTTP/1.0” 400 967 “-” “Apa
che/2.2.17 (Linux/SUSE) (internal dummy connection)”

The same messages are frequently repeated in period from 1sec to several min.
My sites seem to be working normally (but I have a huge CPU load on dinamic php pages).

I know that “internal dummy connections” are the special Apache server connections to test if the server is alive or not. But in my case, for every time Apache tries to connect to itself, it writes errors to the log. Http error code 400 is: “Bad Request - The request cannot be fulfilled due to bad syntax” (from wikipedia).

So, my question is, what can be the reason of such a behavior from Apache? And how this behavior can affect server perfomance/stability?

#2

Looked at this or similar things?

http://wiki.apache.org/httpd/InternalDummyConnection

–
Good luck.

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#3

Thank you for your reply!

Yes, I have already looked at this link. But I don’t want to exclude messages from the log! If I correctly understand the article, this is normal situation, when Apache writes such a messages to its log files.

As Httpd Wiki tells us: "These requests are perfectly normal and you do not, in general, need to worry about them. They can simply be ignored."

But, as I wrote before, in my case, for every time Apache tries to connect to itself, it writes errors to its log. So, why does this errors appear?

I can tell more. I have tried redirecting such a messages to some empty files in my sites directories via mod_rewrite. So, this can help to “relieve” httpd from unnecessary load on the server. But this seems made no result in my case.

But, as I wrote before, the question is why does this errors appear at all? May it be some misconfiguration or a bug in Apache httpd?

#4

Perhaps I should have been clearer in what I found in that article. The
mod_rewrite was my main point, since the article stated that:

Code:

In 2.2.6 and earlier, in certain configurations, these requests may hit a
heavy-weight dynamic web page and cause unnecessary load on the server.
You can avoid this by using mod_rewrite to respond with a redirect when
accessed with that specific User-Agent or IP address.

Perhaps it is related, though admittedly I do not know why you see errors
different from the messages posted in that article.

–
Good luck.

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