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David Tinker
Asked: 2011-01-24 22:18:51 +0800 CST

Intermittent 400 bad request header field is missing ':' with Apache and SSL

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Apache is returning rare intermittent 400 "bad request header field is missing ':' olhuaqv3o1t29flvr0 (random string)" errors. This seems to be related to https access and happens from Firefox, IE, Chrome etc. I am using a certificate from rapidssl.

Apache/2.2.14 (Ubuntu) DAV/2 SVN/1.6.6 mod_jk/1.2.28 PHP/5.3.2-1ubuntu4.5 with Suhosin-Patch mod_ssl/2.2.14 OpenSSL/0.9.8k

Anyone know how to fix this?

ubuntu apache-2.2 ssl

2 Answers

  1. I was having this problem with apache 2.2.9 and upgrading to apache 2.2.22 solved the problem for me.

    I would get random 400 response codes on some of the page requests. Sometimes images, sometimes AJAX requests. Occasionally it would be the page itself that would return a 400 along with this message.

    Bad Request Your browser sent a request that this server could not understand. Request header field is missing ':' separator. live

    I found the following bug report for that seemed related. The bug was fixed in apache 2.2.15 : https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=652335

    I think this bug is the cause for lots of random errors when using https: Your browser sent a request that this server could not understand Request header field is missing ':' separator.

    So thought I'd try updating to the latest apache - and that seemed to work.

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  2. If you're using Windows as your client computers, you can try fiddler (http://www.fiddler2.com/fiddler2/)

    It seems like a Http protocol violation, as I've been experimenting with http(s) proxies recently, and have seen quite a lot of similar untraceable errors. It doesn't seem like the problems of the browser or Apache, so consider the possibility for unstable internet connection if you're testing remotely.

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