Hello again,

a self-compiled mod_jk 1.2.48 shows the same issue.

Am 13.02.2022 um 18:37 schrieb Stefan Mayr:
Hi,

looking at the source code https://github.com/apache/tomcat-connectors/blob/main/native/apache-2.0/mod_jk.c#L2954#L2973 I did some more testing:

Variant 1: JkMount /demo/* ajp13_worker;use_server_errors=401
Variant 2: JkMount /demo/* ajp13_worker

ignoring what variant 2 changes for regular request: reading the source comment my understanding is, that for both variants a HEAD request (by definition must have an empty response body) should let Apache httpd handle the error code.

But the return code for jk_handler looks different:

Variant 1: s.http_response_status
Variant 2: r->status

Although this looks different on the first glance it seems to be the same.

The response only seems correct for variant 1 - which is configured to let Apache httpd handle all responses for status codes >= 401. For variant 2 mod_jk seems to handle the response itself - contrary to what the comment explains.

This leads to the next assumption, that whenever there is a special handling for use_server_errors there should be something similar for the case with an empty/non-existing response body.

There is https://github.com/apache/tomcat-connectors/blob/main/native/common/jk_ajp_common.c#L1991#L1993 with no corresponding (pseudo) code like

if (!r->something_like_bodyct && r->http_response_status >= JK_HTTP_BAD_REQUEST){
                    r->response_blocked = JK_TRUE;
            }

Adding code like this (sorry, i could not find out how to determine if there is a response body) fixes the issue with the wrong response body for a HEAD request. But we miss the WWW-Authenticate header now.

Digging further we find https://github.com/apache/tomcat-connectors/blob/main/native/apache-2.0/mod_jk.c#L331#L353 which has a special treatment for 401 HTTP Unauthorized. But again, only for use_server_errors.

This should be fixable by extending the condition like this

    if ((s->extension.use_server_error_pages &&
        status >= s->extension.use_server_error_pages) ||
        (!r->sent_bodyct && r->status >= HTTP_BAD_REQUEST)) {


But the WWW-Authenticate header is still missing. So i'm wrong, again. Although it feels like i'm close.

Am 12.02.2022 um 14:24 schrieb Stefan Mayr:
Hello Tomcat users,

this week we were debugging a strange connection issue which I tracked down to an interference between Apache httpd and mod_jk.

For the full picture, the infrastructure setup contains

1. a Loadbalancer providing HTTPS, HTTP/1.1 and HTTP/2 for Clients.
2. an Apache httpd 2.4 webserver (HTTP only) with mod_jk
3. a Tomcat mit AJP-Connector

We have an application doing many different HEAD requests against an application running in the Tomcat server. The requests contain an Authorization header for Basic authentication. Expected response is a HTTP 200 OK or HTTP 401 if this particular user is not allowed to access that ressource. Because this is a HEAD request there must not be a response body according to RFC 2616.

If there is a response body in the response to the HEAD request our loadbalancer does strange things: aborts the connection if the clients uses HTTP/2, SSL errors if using HTTP/1.1. But this is an issue on its own which we might have to solve with the vendor.

Now comes the point where I need your help. We have a httpd configuration with mod_jk which generates these invalid response bodies on HEAD requests. I have a gut feeling this could be a bug with mod_jk.

For demonstration purpose i created a minimal demo app which only is a WEB-INF/web.xml
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<web-app xmlns="https://jakarta.ee/xml/ns/jakartaee";
   xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance";
   xsi:schemaLocation="https://jakarta.ee/xml/ns/jakartaee
https://jakarta.ee/xml/ns/jakartaee/web-app_5_0.xsd";
   version="5.0">
         <security-constraint>
                 <web-resource-collection>
                         <web-resource-name>Login</web-resource-name>
                         <url-pattern>/*</url-pattern>
                 </web-resource-collection>
                 <auth-constraint>
                         <role-name>manager</role-name>
                 </auth-constraint>
         </security-constraint>
         <security-role>
                 <role-name>manager</role-name>
         </security-role>
         <login-config>
                 <auth-method>BASIC</auth-method>
         </login-config>
</web-app>

Then I place a JkMount in my Apache httpd configuration (+ minimal worker.properties):

JkMount /demo/* ajp13_worker

Testing this with curl works like expected:

root@1ae8973f1b6b:~# curl -I -v localhost/demo/
*   Trying 127.0.0.1:80...
* TCP_NODELAY set
* Connected to localhost (127.0.0.1) port 80 (#0)
 > HEAD /demo/ HTTP/1.1
 > Host: localhost
 > User-Agent: curl/7.68.0
 > Accept: */*
 >
* Mark bundle as not supporting multiuse
< HTTP/1.1 401 401
HTTP/1.1 401 401
< Date: Sat, 12 Feb 2022 12:57:33 GMT
Date: Sat, 12 Feb 2022 12:57:33 GMT
< Server: Apache/2.4.41 (Ubuntu)
Server: Apache/2.4.41 (Ubuntu)
< Cache-Control: private
Cache-Control: private
< WWW-Authenticate: Basic realm="Authentication required"
WWW-Authenticate: Basic realm="Authentication required"
< Content-Language: en
Content-Language: en
< Content-Type: text/html;charset=utf-8
Content-Type: text/html;charset=utf-8

<
* Connection #0 to host localhost left intact

But our default setup always includes custom error pages:

Alias /error/ "/usr/share/apache2/error/"
ErrorDocument 401 /error/HTTP_UNAUTHORIZED.html.var

If both of those lines are added this results in a response body for the HEAD request.

root@1ae8973f1b6b:~# curl -I -v localhost/demo/
*   Trying 127.0.0.1:80...
* TCP_NODELAY set
* Connected to localhost (127.0.0.1) port 80 (#0)
 > HEAD /demo/ HTTP/1.1
 > Host: localhost
 > User-Agent: curl/7.68.0
 > Accept: */*
 >
* Mark bundle as not supporting multiuse
< HTTP/1.1 401 401
HTTP/1.1 401 401
< Date: Sat, 12 Feb 2022 12:56:27 GMT
Date: Sat, 12 Feb 2022 12:56:27 GMT
< Server: Apache/2.4.41 (Ubuntu)
Server: Apache/2.4.41 (Ubuntu)
< Cache-Control: private
Cache-Control: private
< WWW-Authenticate: Basic realm="Authentication required"
WWW-Authenticate: Basic realm="Authentication required"
< Content-Language: en
Content-Language: en
< Content-Type: text/html;charset=utf-8
Content-Type: text/html;charset=utf-8

<
* Excess found: excess = 589 url = /demo/ (zero-length body)
* Connection #0 to host localhost left intact

Checking with tcpdump on port 8009 we see the expected response without a body from the Tomcat AJP connector. The tcpdump von port 80 reveals httpd is adding the configured ErrorDocument as response body.

If we comment out either the Alias or ErrorDocument directive the response is correct again.

Doing similar tests with CGI/PHP applications always show the correct response without a response body. This only affects requests which use mod_jk.

So far I could reproduce this on SLES12 SP5 and SLES15 SP3 running Apache httpd 2.4.51 and a self compile mod_jk 1.2.46 (same with the included mod_jk 1.2.43) at work. At home the same happens on a stock openSUSE Leap 15.3 with Apache httpd 2.4.51 and mod_jk 1.2.43 as well as on Ubuntu 20.04 with httpd 2.4.41 and mod_jk 1.2.46. I didn't try to compile the latest mod_jk version yet because I didn't spot a relevant point in the changelog.

Can anyone confirm this behaviour or point me to a configuration directive i missed?

--

Regards,

        Stefan Mayr

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