Apache HTTP Server Project

### Apache HTTP Server Version 1.3

# Known Problems in Clients

Over time the Apache Group has discovered or been notified of problems with various clients which we have had to work around, or explain. This document describes these problems and the workarounds available. It's not arranged in any particular order. Some familiarity with the standards is assumed, but not necessary.

For brevity, Navigator will refer to Netscape's Navigator product (which in later versions was renamed "Communicator" and various other names), and MSIE will refer to Microsoft's Internet Explorer product. All trademarks and copyrights belong to their respective companies. We welcome input from the various client authors to correct inconsistencies in this paper, or to provide us with exact version numbers where things are broken/fixed.

For reference, RFC1945 defines HTTP/1.0, and RFC2068 defines HTTP/1.1. Apache as of version 1.2 is an HTTP/1.1 server (with an optional HTTP/1.0 proxy).

Various of these workarounds are triggered by environment variables. The admin typically controls which are set, and for which clients, by using mod_browser. Unless otherwise noted all of these workarounds exist in versions 1.2 and later.

### Trailing CRLF on POSTs

This is a legacy issue. The CERN webserver required `POST` data to have an extra `CRLF` following it. Thus many clients send an extra `CRLF` that is not included in the `Content-Length` of the request. Apache works around this problem by eating any empty lines which appear before a request.

### Broken keepalive

Various clients have had broken implementations of keepalive (persistent connections). In particular the Windows versions of Navigator 2.0 get very confused when the server times out an idle connection. The workaround is present in the default config files:

> `BrowserMatch Mozilla/2 nokeepalive`

Note that this matches some earlier versions of MSIE, which began the practice of calling themselves Mozilla in their user-agent strings just like Navigator.

MSIE 4.0b2, which claims to support HTTP/1.1, does not properly support keepalive when it is used on 301 or 302 (redirect) responses. Unfortunately Apache's `nokeepalive` code prior to 1.2.2 would not work with HTTP/1.1 clients. You must apply this patch to version 1.2.1. Then add this to your config:

> `BrowserMatch "MSIE 4\.0b2;" nokeepalive`

### Incorrect interpretation of `HTTP/1.1` in response

To quote from section 3.1 of RFC1945:

> HTTP uses a "<MAJOR>.<MINOR>" numbering scheme to indicate versions of the protocol. The protocol versioning policy is intended to allow the sender to indicate the format of a message and its capacity for understanding further HTTP communication, rather than the features obtained via that communication.

Since Apache is an HTTP/1.1 server, it indicates so as part of its response. Many client authors mistakenly treat this part of the response as an indication of the protocol that the response is in, and then refuse to accept the response.

The first major indication of this problem was with AOL's proxy servers. When Apache 1.2 went into beta it was the first wide-spread HTTP/1.1 server. After some discussion, AOL fixed their proxies. In anticipation of similar problems, the `force-response-1.0` environment variable was added to Apache. When present Apache will indicate "HTTP/1.0" in response to an HTTP/1.0 client, but will not in any other way change the response.

The pre-1.1 Java Development Kit (JDK) that is used in many clients (including Navigator 3.x and MSIE 3.x) exhibits this problem. As do some of the early pre-releases of the 1.1 JDK. We think it is fixed in the 1.1 JDK release. In any event the workaround:

> `BrowserMatch Java/1.0 force-response-1.0
> BrowserMatch JDK/1.0 force-response-1.0`

RealPlayer 4.0 from Progressive Networks also exhibits this problem. However they have fixed it in version 4.01 of the player, but version 4.01 uses the same `User-Agent` as version 4.0. The workaround is still:

> `BrowserMatch "RealPlayer 4.0" force-response-1.0`

### Requests use HTTP/1.1 but responses must be in HTTP/1.0

MSIE 4.0b2 has this problem. Its Java VM makes requests in HTTP/1.1 format but the responses must be in HTTP/1.0 format (in particular, it does not understand chunked responses). The workaround is to fool Apache into believing the request came in HTTP/1.0 format.

> `BrowserMatch "MSIE 4\.0b2;" downgrade-1.0 force-response-1.0`

This workaround is available in 1.2.2, and in a patch against 1.2.1.

### Boundary problems with header parsing

All versions of Navigator from 2.0 through 4.0b2 (and possibly later) have a problem if the trailing CRLF of the response header starts at offset 256, 257 or 258 of the response. A BrowserMatch for this would match on nearly every hit, so the workaround is enabled automatically on all responses. The workaround implemented detects when this condition would occur in a response and adds extra padding to the header to push the trailing CRLF past offset 258 of the response.

### Multipart responses and Quoted Boundary Strings

On multipart responses some clients will not accept quotes (") around the boundary string. The MIME standard recommends that such quotes be used. But the clients were probably written based on one of the examples in RFC2068, which does not include quotes. Apache does not include quotes on its boundary strings to workaround this problem.

### Byterange requests

A byterange request is used when the client wishes to retrieve a portion of an object, not necessarily the entire object. There was a very old draft which included these byteranges in the URL. Old clients such as Navigator 2.0b1 and MSIE 3.0 for the MAC exhibit this behaviour, and it will appear in the servers' access logs as (failed) attempts to retrieve a URL with a trailing ";xxx-yyy". Apache does not attempt to implement this at all.

A subsequent draft of this standard defines a header `Request-Range`, and a response type `multipart/x-byteranges`. The HTTP/1.1 standard includes this draft with a few fixes, and it defines the header `Range` and type `multipart/byteranges`.

Navigator (versions 2 and 3) sends both `Range` and `Request-Range` headers (with the same value), but does not accept a `multipart/byteranges` response. The response must be `multipart/x-byteranges`. As a workaround, if Apache receives a `Request-Range` header it considers it "higher priority" than a `Range` header and in response uses `multipart/x-byteranges`.

The Adobe Acrobat Reader plugin makes extensive use of byteranges and prior to version 3.01 supports only the `multipart/x-byterange` response. Unfortunately there is no clue that it is the plugin making the request. If the plugin is used with Navigator, the above workaround works fine. But if the plugin is used with MSIE 3 (on Windows) the workaround won't work because MSIE 3 doesn't give the `Range-Request` clue that Navigator does. To workaround this, Apache special cases "MSIE 3" in the `User-Agent` and serves `multipart/x-byteranges`. Note that the necessity for this with MSIE 3 is actually due to the Acrobat plugin, not due to the browser.

Netscape Communicator appears to not issue the non-standard `Request-Range` header. When an Acrobat plugin prior to version 3.01 is used with it, it will not properly understand byteranges. The user must upgrade their Acrobat reader to 3.01.

### `Set-Cookie` header is unmergeable

The HTTP specifications say that it is legal to merge headers with duplicate names into one (separated by semicolon). Some browsers that support Cookies don't like merged headers and prefer that each `Set-Cookie` header is sent separately. When parsing the headers returned by a CGI, Apache will explicitly avoid merging any `Set-Cookie` headers.

### `Expires` headers and GIF89A animations

Navigator versions 2 through 4 will erroneously re-request GIF89A animations on each loop of the animation if the first response included an `Expires` header. This happens regardless of how far in the future the expiry time is set. There is no workaround supplied with Apache, however there are hacks for 1.2 and for 1.3.

### `POST` without `Content-Length`

In certain situations Navigator 3.01 through 3.03 appear to incorrectly issue a POST without the request body. There is no known workaround. It has been fixed in Navigator 3.04, Netscapes provides some information. There's also some information about the actual problem.

### JDK 1.2 betas lose parts of responses.

The http client in the JDK1.2beta2 and beta3 will throw away the first part of the response body when both the headers and the first part of the body are sent in the same network packet AND keep-alive's are being used. If either condition is not met then it works fine.

See also Bug-ID's 4124329 and 4125538 at the java developer connection.

If you are seeing this bug yourself, you can add the following BrowserMatch directive to work around it:

> `BrowserMatch "Java1\.2beta[23]" nokeepalive`

We don't advocate this though since bending over backwards for beta software is usually not a good idea; ideally it gets fixed, new betas or a final release comes out, and no one uses the broken old software anymore. In theory.

### `Content-Type` change is not noticed after reload

Navigator (all versions?) will cache the `content-type` for an object "forever". Using reload or shift-reload will not cause Navigator to notice a `content-type` change. The only work-around is for the user to flush their caches (memory and disk). By way of an example, some folks may be using an old `mime.types` file which does not map `.htm` to `text/html`, in this case Apache will default to sending `text/plain`. If the user requests the page and it is served as `text/plain`. After the admin fixes the server, the user will have to flush their caches before the object will be shown with the correct `text/html` type.

### Apache HTTP Server Version 1.3