Bug 53218 - ProxyPass worker name (http://localhost:3128/...) too long
Summary: ProxyPass worker name (http://localhost:3128/...) too long
Status: RESOLVED FIXED
Alias: None
Product: Apache httpd-2
Classification: Unclassified
Component: mod_proxy (show other bugs)
Version: 2.4.7
Hardware: PC Linux
: P5 blocker with 11 votes (vote)
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: Apache HTTPD Bugs Mailing List
URL:
Keywords:
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2012-05-11 01:32 UTC by Makoto Murata
Modified: 2022-03-09 12:07 UTC (History)
7 users (show)



Attachments
http://www.ufifa.com (118 bytes, patch)
2018-02-08 16:22 UTC, ufifa
Details | Diff

Note You need to log in before you can comment on or make changes to this bug.
Description Makoto Murata 2012-05-11 01:32:29 UTC
Hi.

I'm tring to change apache from 2.2 to 2.4.2.
And apachectl reports there is error in my configuration file about proxypass.

-----
# /usr/local/apache24/bin/apachectl -t
AH00548: NameVirtualHost has no effect and will be removed in the next release /usr/local/apache24/conf/httpd.conf:101
AH00526: Syntax error on line 615 of /usr/local/apache24/conf/httpd.conf:
ProxyPass worker name (http://localhost:3128/VirtualHostBase/http/www.hogefuga.com:80/fugafugafile/VirtualHostRoot/++resource++Products.HOGEHOGE.public.stylesheets) too long
-----

I read some sorce files and found there is length limit in worker name.
In mod_proxy.h:305 there is define of length of proxy worker name.

----
#define PROXY_WORKER_MAX_NAME_SIZE      96
----

I think in some casees this size is not enough.
In my case (legth is 177 chars.), I doubled this number and works fine.
Would you please increase this size.

Thank you.
Comment 1 kiorky 2014-02-13 17:29:52 UTC
I confirm the bug and second the importance of this bug to be solved.
Comment 2 masc2279 2014-02-25 23:58:22 UTC
I can also confirm the bug. This version is completely useless have to downgrade. Even the hack does not work. Just changing the #define PROXY_WORKER_MAX_NAME_SIZE      96   by itself does nothing at least on my side even if you place a number beyond what is needed it still says too long.
Comment 3 kiorky 2014-02-26 07:02:44 UTC
We got our way using PT rewrites, eg 

# /-> vhmonster proxyreverse because of redirects !
RewriteRule ^/(.*)$ /VirtualHostBase/http/edit.foo.bar.net:80/Plone/VirtualHostRoot/$1 [L,PT]

# for https://issues.apache.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=53218, only use a simple worker url
ProxyPass         /         http://127.0.0.1:8083/ retry=1
ProxyPassReverse  /         http://127.0.0.1:8083/VirtualHostBase/http/edit.foo.bar.net:80/Plone/VirtualHostRoot/
ProxyPassReverse  /zmiroot/ http://127.0.0.1:8083/VirtualHostBase/http/edit.foo.bar.net:80/VirtualHostRoot/_vh_zmiroot/
Comment 4 Alan 2014-07-02 22:50:43 UTC
I can confirm this bug as well on Kubuntu 14.04 LTS 64-bit running Apache 2.4.7.  Unfortunately, it is making it impossible for me to serve Plone pages through Apache, which is preventing me from upgrading my production servers to 14.04 LTS.  It would be great if this issue could be addressed soon.  Thanks.
Comment 5 kiorky 2014-07-03 07:43:12 UTC
Alan, you can use rewrites instead of proxypass, even if it is a bug, this workaround which is more another way to do that  workaround will let you upgrade.

If you are just setting up a proxy, you may also opt for something like nginx.
Comment 6 sebastian 2014-07-27 18:40:51 UTC
I second that. Especially with unix domain sockets allowed in mod_proxy the names can get quite long.
Comment 7 Jim Jagielski 2014-08-29 18:35:06 UTC
I am looking into whether or not that should be a fatal error... we may be able to get around just reporting it, and still using/accepting a truncated copy.
Comment 8 Rainer Jung 2014-09-04 09:21:38 UTC
Maximum worker name length increased by jim to 256 in trunk (and some other limits increased as well). Revisions r1540318, r1621367, r1621372, r1621373, r1621382.
Proposed for backport to 2.4.x.
Comment 9 Rainer Jung 2014-09-04 11:24:01 UTC
There's an API compatibility problem with a straight backport proposal. Backport on hold.
Comment 10 kiorky 2014-09-04 19:06:18 UTC
256 is not enougth !
Comment 11 Rainer Jung 2014-09-08 10:53:46 UTC
There's a workaround available that should be applicable to many situations: combined ProxyPass with RewriteRule [P] flag:

One can do reverse proxying with mod_proxy ProxyPass but also with mod_rewrite RewriteRule [P] flag. The former often is "better", because it uses a pool of persistent connections to the origin server and the characteristics of the connections can be configured in more detail.

What is possible here, is a combination of both approaches: Use a "dummy" ProxyPass with short right side URI to configure a pool to the origin server but RewriteRule for the individual proxy rules containing the long target URLs. As long as the right side of the ProxyPass matches thebeginning of the RewriteRule target URL, the proxying will be done via the connection pool configured with ProxyPass.

An Example:

# This directive must come before the following one in order
# block access to arbitrary URIs on the origin server!
# As an alternative one can also use "RewriteRule /UNUSED - [F]"
ProxyPass /UNUSED !

# Configure a connection pool for the origin server
# http://myserver.example.org:9081
ProxyPass /UNUSED http://myserver.example.org:9081

RewriteEngine On

# Proxy "/long" to a long URI on the origin server,
# [P] flag at end of line is important
RewriteRule /long http://myserver.example.org:9081/aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa/bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb/long.html [P]

# Proxy "/verylong" to an even longer URI on the origin server,
# again [P] flag at end of line is important
RewriteRule /verylong http://myserver.example.org:9081/aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa/bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb/cccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccc/dddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddd/verylong.html [P]

Pro:

- you can use long origin server URIs
- the requests are still dispatched to a pool of persistent connections
- You can combine this with ProxyPassReverse and similar directives

Con:

- all requests to this origin server will use the same connection pool, not one pool per target URI. This might be a con in some cases (less separation), in some it might actually be a pro (sharing of resources)
- need a combination of two different syntaxes (harder to understand)
- might not work for any protocol to the origin server (ajp, fcgi, scgi etc.), I simply haven't tested it for those.
Comment 12 kiorky 2014-09-08 10:56:42 UTC
if you had read the bug report, you would notice that i posted myself this workaround.
Comment 13 Rainer Jung 2014-09-08 18:10:44 UTC
Sorry. I read much more than this bug report (there's also other discussion going on) and overlooked your workaround in comment #3 above.

Note though that

- your recipe opens up the origin server for any URI via the ProxyPass for "/". Often that is not wanted, therefore my recipe contains the additional and important ProxyPass with a "!". This in turn only makes sense by using some "/UNUSED" instead of simply "/". This change has security implications.

- you are using the pass-through flag "PT", I'm using the proxy flag "P". I didn't try "PT" but "P" seems to be more correct. Your mileage may vary.

Regards,

Rainer
Comment 14 Ruediger Pluem 2014-09-08 18:58:32 UTC
Even easier: Create a

<Proxy protocol://server/yourseparationpathprefix>
   SetProxy anyoption
</Proxy>

block in your configuration and you are using a connection pool with RewriteRule [P]
Comment 15 Christopher Schultz 2014-12-02 14:20:48 UTC
+1 for increasing the URL length limit for proxy targets.

I ran into this recently with an https:// proxy where the hostname was long, causing the URLs to exceed this limit. Using the IP address was not possible because the HTTPS connection refused to handshake because of a mismatched hostname (IP != cert hostname).

The workaround in my case was to use ProxyPassMatch which is non-ideal as it adds a regular expression evaluation (multiple, since I have many ProxyPassMatch directives) to every request, plus I can't be as specific as I need to when mapping certain URLs and not others.

I would normally use mod_jk, but the client required the use of HTTPS between the reverse proxy and application server (Tomcat, in this case).
Comment 16 ranjith 2018-02-06 02:52:48 UTC
AH02808: Alert! worker name ....too long; truncated to:96 characters

ProxyPass / https://somehost.test.com:8080/service=com.test.myservice/version%=0.0.1/routeOffer=default/envContext=TEST/subContext=web/services/myservice/

ProxyPassReverse / https://somehost.test.com:8080/service=com.test.myservice/version%=0.0.1/routeOffer=default/envContext=TEST/subContext=web/services/myservice/
 

Actual url length is 189 characters. But Proxy pass restricts to 96 characters. How to increase this length ?
Comment 17 Graham Leggett 2018-02-07 15:39:00 UTC
This was worked around in v2.4.12 by supporting truncation of the balancer name:

https://svn.apache.org/viewvc?view=revision&revision=1634520
Comment 18 Graham Leggett 2018-02-07 15:44:00 UTC
Fixed and released in v2.4.12.
Comment 19 kiorky 2018-02-07 15:58:00 UTC
Sorry but no, the situation is even now worsier than before.

For very long urls, that per se those that you can have when reverse proxying zope with VHM urls, truncating may make apache reverse proxying portions of the site that you would not want to expose in the first place.


Truncating may expose "upper" resources and is not at all a solution.

Either there is an error, if it is not technically possible,
Or the proxy proxy EXACTLY where we pointed it.

There is no reason to automatically & silently make an assumption where to proxy and even more on a different location...
Comment 20 Jim Jagielski 2018-02-07 16:46:34 UTC
But it is NOT silently. It is logged at APLOG_ERR to allow the admin to know that it happened and to decide if it is, or is NOT, a problem.
Comment 21 kiorky 2018-02-07 16:55:21 UTC
(In reply to Jim Jagielski from comment #20)
> But it is NOT silently. It is logged at APLOG_ERR to allow the admin to know
> that it happened and to decide if it is, or is NOT, a problem.

So truncation does not have to happen, and most of the time even fail.

Exposing upper resources is most of the time EVIL...


This commit is at best a workaround, and in my opinion a big and dangerous regression.
Comment 22 Jim Jagielski 2018-02-07 17:07:26 UTC
Of course exposing resources unintentionally is EVIL. That is why when there is the possibility, it is logged so allow the admin, who is the final arbitrator, to determine if they are exposed or not.
Comment 23 kiorky 2018-02-07 18:35:47 UTC
The proxypassed ressources, from a security point of view have not to be exposed in another location, if there is a mismatch, it is a fatal configuration error.

The introcuded change is a new (security) bug.

It is not relevant to silently warn the Op behind the scene, this must either proxypass to the aforementioned location or fail, it's as simple as that...
Comment 24 Christopher Schultz 2018-02-07 22:26:02 UTC
Is there some very sensitive internal structure which cannot be expanded to include some larger, arbitrary number of characters/bytes for the worker-name? If not, can we just get a higher limit on the URL length? Most URL limits in httpd are around 8k characters/bytes, no?

(In reply to Jim Jagielski from comment #22)
> Of course exposing resources unintentionally is EVIL. That is why when there
> is the possibility, it is logged so allow the admin, who is the final
> arbitrator, to determine if they are exposed or not.

Unfortunately, the log is only advisory. httpd continues to start up in what I would describe generously as a "degraded" condition... one where a (likely) larger URL space will be proxied than initially intended.
Comment 25 Ruediger Pluem 2018-02-08 08:39:52 UTC
> 
> (In reply to Jim Jagielski from comment #22)
> > Of course exposing resources unintentionally is EVIL. That is why when there
> > is the possibility, it is logged so allow the admin, who is the final
> > arbitrator, to determine if they are exposed or not.
> 
> Unfortunately, the log is only advisory. httpd continues to start up in what
> I would describe generously as a "degraded" condition... one where a
> (likely) larger URL space will be proxied than initially intended.

I would completely agree if this would be the case, but it isn't. The error messages tells you that the worker name was truncated. This is unrelated to the request URL that is forwarded. The truncated worker name only means that if you have multiple ProxyPass directives and if the truncation of the worker name leads to the same worker name they use the same connection pool for the backend connections. This is no issue at all, contrawise: It saves resources on the backend.
Comment 26 Christopher Schultz 2018-02-08 15:01:32 UTC
(In reply to Ruediger Pluem from comment #25)
> > 
> > (In reply to Jim Jagielski from comment #22)
> > > Of course exposing resources unintentionally is EVIL. That is why when there
> > > is the possibility, it is logged so allow the admin, who is the final
> > > arbitrator, to determine if they are exposed or not.
> > 
> > Unfortunately, the log is only advisory. httpd continues to start up in what
> > I would describe generously as a "degraded" condition... one where a
> > (likely) larger URL space will be proxied than initially intended.
> 
> I would completely agree if this would be the case, but it isn't. The error
> messages tells you that the worker name was truncated. This is unrelated to
> the request URL that is forwarded. The truncated worker name only means that
> if you have multiple ProxyPass directives and if the truncation of the
> worker name leads to the same worker name they use the same connection pool
> for the backend connections. This is no issue at all, contrawise: It saves
> resources on the backend.

Thanks for that clarification. To re-phrase, the worker name is being truncated, but incoming URLs will not be truncated for comparison, yes?

Could this become a problem is if the hostname of the origin server is something insanely long? For example, if I want two workers like http://super-long-hostname:80/ and http://super-long-hostname:81/ and those "super-long-hostname" names exceed the worker-name limit, they will be considered the same worker, yes? That means that requests that should go to e.g. port 81 might end up instead going to port 80.
Comment 27 Ruediger Pluem 2018-02-13 06:39:28 UTC
(In reply to Christopher Schultz from comment #26)
> (In reply to Ruediger Pluem from comment #25)
> > > 
> > > (In reply to Jim Jagielski from comment #22)
> > > > Of course exposing resources unintentionally is EVIL. That is why when there
> > > > is the possibility, it is logged so allow the admin, who is the final
> > > > arbitrator, to determine if they are exposed or not.
> > > 
> > > Unfortunately, the log is only advisory. httpd continues to start up in what
> > > I would describe generously as a "degraded" condition... one where a
> > > (likely) larger URL space will be proxied than initially intended.
> > 
> > I would completely agree if this would be the case, but it isn't. The error
> > messages tells you that the worker name was truncated. This is unrelated to
> > the request URL that is forwarded. The truncated worker name only means that
> > if you have multiple ProxyPass directives and if the truncation of the
> > worker name leads to the same worker name they use the same connection pool
> > for the backend connections. This is no issue at all, contrawise: It saves
> > resources on the backend.
> 
> Thanks for that clarification. To re-phrase, the worker name is being
> truncated, but incoming URLs will not be truncated for comparison, yes?

Correct.

> 
> Could this become a problem is if the hostname of the origin server is
> something insanely long? For example, if I want two workers like
> http://super-long-hostname:80/ and http://super-long-hostname:81/ and those
> "super-long-hostname" names exceed the worker-name limit, they will be
> considered the same worker, yes? That means that requests that should go to
> e.g. port 81 might end up instead going to port 80.

Yes, this would be a problem. There is a similar PR (PR62085) on this.
But due to ABI constraints this is not easy to fix in a stable version.
Comment 28 Christopher Schultz 2018-02-14 13:58:59 UTC
(In reply to Ruediger Pluem from comment #27)
> (In reply to Christopher Schultz from comment #26)
> > Could this become a problem is if the hostname of the origin server is
> > something insanely long? For example, if I want two workers like
> > http://super-long-hostname:80/ and http://super-long-hostname:81/ and those
> > "super-long-hostname" names exceed the worker-name limit, they will be
> > considered the same worker, yes? That means that requests that should go to
> > e.g. port 81 might end up instead going to port 80.
> 
> Yes, this would be a problem. There is a similar PR (PR62085) on this.
> But due to ABI constraints this is not easy to fix in a stable version.

How about adding a new ProxyPass parameter called "workername" where you can explicitly set the worker name to something both short AND unique? Or is that best requested as a new enhancement?
Comment 29 Christopher Schultz 2019-09-20 21:36:17 UTC
*** This bug has been confirmed by popular vote. ***
Comment 30 YLM 2021-12-21 15:46:35 UTC
Hi.

It seems that this problem is still present in 2.4.48.
Looking to mod_proxy.h, PROXY_WORKER_MAX_NAME_SIZE & PROXY_BALANCER_MAX_NAME_SIZE are still set to 96 char long, causing some "AH02808 Alert! worker name * too long; truncated to *" in our logs

Having a lot of Proxy conf, injected at runtime by other team, stop/start logs are dumping hundreds of these warning lines, though and as far as I can understand, do no arm to Apache runtime behavior.

It would be great if a "reasonnable" longer max length could be set (256?)

BR
Comment 31 Yann Ylavic 2021-12-21 20:17:22 UTC
I created https://github.com/apache/httpd/pull/288, would you try the patch there (https://patch-diff.githubusercontent.com/raw/apache/httpd/pull/288.diff)?
Comment 32 Yann Ylavic 2022-03-04 09:33:03 UTC
Backported to 2.4.x (r1898588), will be in 2.4.53.
Comment 33 DLA 2022-03-09 12:07:38 UTC
Hello,
I am on httpd 2.4.6_97.el7_9.2 and I have this error

httpd[46619]: ProxyPass worker hostname (web-xxxxx-xxxxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx.xx-xxx.xxx.xxxxxxxxxx.xx) too long

can someone tell me when this error will be fixed on httpd?