401 Unauthorized error when using Apache 2.4

Question

I currently have an application proxied through 2 separate web servers. One web server is running Apache 2.2 while the other web server is running Apache 2.4. While some of the configuration had to be changed to accommodate Apache 2.4, the configuration between these 2 web servers is essentially the same (we were upgrading web servers).

This application works fine when proxied through Apache 2.2, however when accessing the application through Apache 2.4 I run into an issue.

The application that I am accessing is constantly polling for data by sending out successive AJAX requests. After a certain amount of time/requests (does not seem to be consistent), the Apache 2.4 web server returns a 401 Unauthorized error causing the application to fail. Keep in mind that it works without issue for a period of time however the 401 error always presents itself within a couple of minutes.

When accessing the application via an internal IP or through the Apache 2.2 web server, I do not encounter this issue which leads me to believe Apache 2.4 is causing the issue. Something to do with the successive requests within a short period of time?

Is there a configuration setting that I need to include in Apache 2.4 in order for things to work properly? I am at a loss as to why the 401 error does not present itself initially (everything works fine initially), but does so after a short period of time.

Please let me know if you need any further information. I can provide any .conf files that are necessary. Your help is greatly appreciated.

Best Regards

EDIT: Apache 2.4 'apache2.conf' file (comments removed):

Mutex file:${APACHE_LOCK_DIR} default

PidFile ${APACHE_PID_FILE}

Timeout 300

KeepAlive On

MaxKeepAliveRequests 100

KeepAliveTimeout 15

ServerLimit 2000

<IfModule event.c>
    StartServers          2
    MinSpareThreads      25
    MaxSpareThreads      150 
    ThreadLimit          64
    ThreadsPerChild      25
    MaxClients          2000
</IfModule>

User ${APACHE_RUN_USER}
Group ${APACHE_RUN_GROUP}

HostnameLookups Off

ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log

LogLevel debug

IncludeOptional mods-enabled/*.load
IncludeOptional mods-enabled/*.conf

Include ports.conf

<Directory />
    Options FollowSymLinks
    AllowOverride None
    Require all denied
</Directory>

<Directory /usr/share>
    AllowOverride None
    Require all granted
</Directory>

<Directory /var/www/>
    Options Indexes FollowSymLinks
    AllowOverride None
    Require all granted
</Directory>

AccessFileName .htaccess

<FilesMatch "^\.ht">
    Require all denied
</FilesMatch>

LogFormat "%v:%p %h %l %u %t \"%r\" %>s %O \"%{Referer}i\" \"%{User-Agent}i\""     vhost_combined
LogFormat "%h %l %u %t \"%r\" %>s %O \"%{Referer}i\" \"%{User-Agent}i\""    combined
LogFormat "%h %l %u %t \"%r\" %>s %O" common
LogFormat "%{Referer}i -> %U" referer
LogFormat "%{User-agent}i" agent

IncludeOptional conf-enabled/*.conf

IncludeOptional sites-enabled/*.conf

EDIT 2: Apache 2.4 Virtual Host Config

<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerName application.url.com:80
    ServerAlias application.url.com
    ServerAdmin noreply@noreply.com

    DocumentRoot /sharedfilesystem/htdocs

    <Directory />
            Options -Indexes +FollowSymLinks
            AllowOverride None
    </Directory>

    <Directory /sharedfilesystem/htdocs>
            Options -Indexes +FollowSymLinks +MultiViews
            AllowOverride None
            Require all granted
    </Directory>

    ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/application.url.com/error.log

    LogLevel warn

    CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/application.url.com/access.log combined

    RewriteEngine On

    RewriteCond %{DOCUMENT_ROOT}/maintenance.html -f
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !/maintenance.html
    RewriteRule ^.*$ /maintenance.html [L]

    RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} !^$
    RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^referredBy=.*$ [NC]

    Include conf.d/*.conf
</VirtualHost>

EDIT 3: Apache 2.4 .conf file:

<Location "/ApplicationName">
    ProxyPass http://xx.x.x.xxx:8081/ApplicationName
    ProxyPassReverse http://xx.x.x.xxx:8081/ApplicationName
</Location>

Alias "/scripts" "/sharedfilesystem/scripts"
<Directory "/sharedfilesystem/scripts">
    Options None +FollowSymLinks
    AllowOverride None
    Require all granted
</Directory>

Alias "/css" "/sharedfilesystem/css"
<Directory "/sharedfilesystem/css">
    Options None +FollowSymLinks
    AllowOverride None
    Require all granted
</Directory>

Alias "/images" "/sharedfilesystem/images"
<Directory "/sharedfilesystem/images">
    Options None +FollowSymLinks
    AllowOverride None
    Require all granted
</Directory>

<Macro Template $templateName>
    AliasMatch (?i)^/$templateName(.*) "/sharedfilesystem/$templateName/htdocs$1"
    <Directory "/sharedfilesystem/$templateName/htdocs">
            Options None +FollowSymLinks
            AllowOverride None
            Require all granted
    </Directory>
</Macro>

Use Template TemplateName

EDIT 4: Output of CURL Command:

* About to connect() to application.url.com port 80 (#0)
*   Trying xx.xx.xx.xx... connected
> GET /ApplicationName HTTP/1.1
> User-Agent: curl/7.22.0 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu) libcurl/7.22.0 OpenSSL/1.0.1 zlib/1.2.3.4 libidn/1.23 librtmp/2.3
> Host: application.url.com
> Accept: */*
>
< HTTP/1.1 302 Moved Temporarily
< Date: Wed, 10 Jan 2018 17:17:30 GMT
< Server: Apache-Coyote/1.1
< Location: http://application.url.com/ApplicationName/
< Content-Length: 0
< Content-Type: text/plain
<
* Connection #0 to host application.url.com left intact
* Closing connection #0

EDIT 5: Virtual Host error.log:

[proxy_http:error] [pid 2139:tid 140080089888512] (104)Connection reset by peer: [client xx.x.x.xx:57710] AH01102: error reading status line from remote server xx.x.x.xxx:8081, referer: http://application.url.com/ApplicationName/control?vi=jlsut7u1d05np
[proxy:error] [pid 2139:tid 140080089888512] [client xx.x.xx.xx:57710] AH00898: Error reading from remote server returned by /ApplicationName/entryFailure, referer: http://application.url.com/ApplicationName/control?vi=jlsut7u1d05np

EDIT 6: Virtual Host access.log showing successive 200 responses then 401 response:

xx.x.xx.xx - - [05/Jan/2018:15:47:34 -0500] "GET /ApplicationName/rest/view/7r3aa5jfn22ld/update?_=1515185254581&casPartySeq=490&casConfSeq=1054&casQaSeq=490&ctxSeq=23 HTTP/1.1" 200 386 "http://application.url.com/ApplicationName/control?vi=7r3aa5jfn22ld" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/63.0.3239.84 Safari/537.36"
xx.x.xx.xx - - [05/Jan/2018:15:47:35 -0500] "GET /ApplicationName/rest/view/7r3aa5jfn22ld/update?_=1515185255012&casPartySeq=490&casConfSeq=1054&casQaSeq=490&ctxSeq=23 HTTP/1.1" 200 386 "http://application.url.com/ApplicationName/control?vi=7r3aa5jfn22ld" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/63.0.3239.84 Safari/537.36"
xx.x.xx.xx - - [05/Jan/2018:15:47:35 -0500] "GET /ApplicationName/rest/view/59oe744gqs05i/update?_=1515185254703&casPartySeq=490&casConfSeq=1054&casQaSeq=490&ctxSeq=23 HTTP/1.1" 200 386 "http://application.url.com/ApplicationName/control?vi=59oe744gqs05i" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/63.0.3239.84 Safari/537.36"
xx.x.xx.xx - - [05/Jan/2018:15:47:35 -0500] "GET /ApplicationName/rest/view/7r3aa5jfn22ld/update?_=1515185255461&casPartySeq=490&casConfSeq=1054&casQaSeq=490&ctxSeq=23 HTTP/1.1" 200 386 "http://application.url.com/ApplicationName/control?vi=7r3aa5jfn22ld" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/63.0.3239.84 Safari/537.36"
xx.x.xx.xx - - [05/Jan/2018:15:47:36 -0500] "GET /ApplicationName/rest/view/7r3aa5jfn22ld/update?_=1515185255913&casPartySeq=490&casConfSeq=1054&casQaSeq=490&ctxSeq=23 HTTP/1.1" 200 386 "http://application.url.com/ApplicationName/control?vi=7r3aa5jfn22ld" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/63.0.3239.84 Safari/537.36"
xx.x.xx.xx - - [05/Jan/2018:15:47:36 -0500] "GET /ApplicationName/rest/view/59oe744gqs05i/update?_=1515185255703&casPartySeq=490&casConfSeq=1054&casQaSeq=490&ctxSeq=23 HTTP/1.1" 200 386 "http://application.url.com/ApplicationName/control?vi=59oe744gqs05i" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/63.0.3239.84 Safari/537.36"
xx.x.xx.xx - - [05/Jan/2018:15:47:36 -0500] "GET /ApplicationName/rest/view/7r3aa5jfn22ld/update?_=1515185256430&casPartySeq=490&casConfSeq=1054&casQaSeq=490&ctxSeq=23 HTTP/1.1" 200 385 "http://application.url.com/ApplicationName/control?vi=7r3aa5jfn22ld" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/63.0.3239.84 Safari/537.36"
xx.x.xx.xx - - [05/Jan/2018:15:47:37 -0500] "GET /ApplicationName/rest/view/7r3aa5jfn22ld/update?_=1515185256994&casPartySeq=490&casConfSeq=1054&casQaSeq=490&ctxSeq=23 HTTP/1.1" 200 626 "http://application.url.com/ApplicationName/control?vi=7r3aa5jfn22ld" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/63.0.3239.84 Safari/537.36"
xx.x.xx.xx - - [05/Jan/2018:15:47:37 -0500] "GET /ApplicationName/rest/view/59oe744gqs05i/update?_=1515185256703&casPartySeq=490&casConfSeq=1054&casQaSeq=490&ctxSeq=23 HTTP/1.1" 200 627 "http://application.url.com/ApplicationName/control?vi=59oe744gqs05i" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/63.0.3239.84 Safari/537.36"
xx.x.xx.xx - - [05/Jan/2018:15:47:37 -0500] "GET /ApplicationName/rest/view/7r3aa5jfn22ld/update?_=1515185257423&casPartySeq=490&casConfSeq=1054&casQaSeq=490&ctxSeq=24 HTTP/1.1" 200 385 "http://application.url.com/ApplicationName/control?vi=7r3aa5jfn22ld" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/63.0.3239.84 Safari/537.36"
xx.x.xx.xx - - [05/Jan/2018:15:47:37 -0500] "GET /ApplicationName/rest/view/7r3aa5jfn22ld/update?_=1515185257888&casPartySeq=490&casConfSeq=1054&casQaSeq=490&ctxSeq=24 HTTP/1.1" 200 385 "http://application.url.com/ApplicationName/control?vi=7r3aa5jfn22ld" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/63.0.3239.84 Safari/537.36"
xx.x.xx.xx - - [05/Jan/2018:15:47:38 -0500] "GET /ApplicationName/rest/view/59oe744gqs05i/update?_=1515185257703&casPartySeq=490&casConfSeq=1054&casQaSeq=490&ctxSeq=24 HTTP/1.1" 200 386 "http://application.url.com/ApplicationName/control?vi=59oe744gqs05i" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/63.0.3239.84 Safari/537.36"
xx.x.xx.xx - - [05/Jan/2018:15:47:38 -0500] "GET /ApplicationName/rest/view/7r3aa5jfn22ld/update?_=1515185258320&casPartySeq=490&casConfSeq=1054&casQaSeq=490&ctxSeq=24 HTTP/1.1" 200 385 "http://application.url.com/ApplicationName/control?vi=7r3aa5jfn22ld" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/63.0.3239.84 Safari/537.36"
xx.x.xx.xx - - [05/Jan/2018:15:47:38 -0500] "GET /ApplicationName/rest/view/7r3aa5jfn22ld/update?_=1515185258760&casPartySeq=490&casConfSeq=1054&casQaSeq=490&ctxSeq=24 HTTP/1.1" 200 385 "http://application.url.com/ApplicationName/control?vi=7r3aa5jfn22ld" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/63.0.3239.84 Safari/537.36"
xx.x.xx.xx - - [05/Jan/2018:15:47:39 -0500] "GET /ApplicationName/rest/view/59oe744gqs05i/update?_=1515185258703&casPartySeq=490&casConfSeq=1054&casQaSeq=490&ctxSeq=24 HTTP/1.1" 200 386 "http://application.url.com/ApplicationName/control?vi=59oe744gqs05i" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/63.0.3239.84 Safari/537.36"
xx.x.xx.xx - - [05/Jan/2018:15:47:39 -0500] "GET /ApplicationName/rest/view/7r3aa5jfn22ld/update?_=1515185259341&casPartySeq=490&casConfSeq=1054&casQaSeq=490&ctxSeq=24 HTTP/1.1" 200 385 "http://application.url.com/ApplicationName/control?vi=7r3aa5jfn22ld" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/63.0.3239.84 Safari/537.36"
xx.x.xx.xx - - [05/Jan/2018:15:47:39 -0500] "GET /ApplicationName/rest/view/7r3aa5jfn22ld/update?_=1515185259900&casPartySeq=490&casConfSeq=1054&casQaSeq=490&ctxSeq=24 HTTP/1.1" 200 385 "http://application.url.com/ApplicationName/control?vi=7r3aa5jfn22ld" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/63.0.3239.84 Safari/537.36"
xx.x.xx.xx - - [05/Jan/2018:15:47:40 -0500] "GET /ApplicationName/rest/view/59oe744gqs05i/update?_=1515185259707&casPartySeq=490&casConfSeq=1054&casQaSeq=490&ctxSeq=24 HTTP/1.1" 200 386 "http://application.url.com/ApplicationName/control?vi=59oe744gqs05i" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/63.0.3239.84 Safari/537.36"
xx.x.xx.xx - - [05/Jan/2018:15:47:40 -0500] "GET /ApplicationName/rest/view/7r3aa5jfn22ld/update?_=1515185260345&casPartySeq=490&casConfSeq=1054&casQaSeq=490&ctxSeq=24 HTTP/1.1" 200 385 "http://application.url.com/ApplicationName/control?vi=7r3aa5jfn22ld" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/63.0.3239.84 Safari/537.36"
xx.x.xx.xx - - [05/Jan/2018:15:47:40 -0500] "GET /ApplicationName/rest/view/7r3aa5jfn22ld/update?_=1515185260825&casPartySeq=490&casConfSeq=1054&casQaSeq=490&ctxSeq=24 HTTP/1.1" 200 349 "http://application.url.com/ApplicationName/control?vi=7r3aa5jfn22ld" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/63.0.3239.84 Safari/537.36"
xx.x.xx.xx - - [05/Jan/2018:15:47:41 -0500] "GET /ApplicationName/rest/view/59oe744gqs05i/update?_=1515185260703&casPartySeq=490&casConfSeq=1054&casQaSeq=490&ctxSeq=24 HTTP/1.1" 200 386 "http://application.url.com/ApplicationName/control?vi=59oe744gqs05i" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/63.0.3239.84 Safari/537.36"
xx.x.xx.xx - - [05/Jan/2018:15:47:41 -0500] "GET /ApplicationName/rest/view/7r3aa5jfn22ld/update?_=1515185261272&casPartySeq=490&casConfSeq=1054&casQaSeq=490&ctxSeq=24 HTTP/1.1" 401 345 "http://application.url.com/ApplicationName/control?vi=7r3aa5jfn22ld" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/63.0.3239.84 Safari/537.36"

you are asking people to guess if you don't show the configuration. — ezra-s, Jan 09 '18 at 23:46
I have posted the configuration for Apache 2.4 in my edit above. — MotoDave452, Jan 10 '18 at 13:40
at first glance that looks alright. Try to paste the relevant virtualhost config too and I recommend you try to omit comments from the config file. As I see it now you are allowing access in /var/www and /usr/share but that can be overriden in virtualhost. Also try to paste the result of "curl -v httpX://yoururl" — ezra-s, Jan 10 '18 at 15:20
Removed comments from apache2.conf and also included the relevant virtual host file. — MotoDave452, Jan 10 '18 at 16:36
Have you checked the apache and the application logs to see if there is any clue there? — EvilTorbalan, Jan 10 '18 at 16:42
I do not see anything of interest in my Apache 2.4 error.log. In access.log I see my successive GET requests returning a 200 up until I receive the 401 I talked about earlier. I will do a deeper scan of the application logs and get back to you. The only thing I saw when testing earlier were errors resulting from the 401 I received from the Apache 2.4 web server. — MotoDave452, Jan 10 '18 at 16:48
It is important to see what the error log says. If you don't see anything in error log regarding the 401, then it is not Apache sending that error, aka, it is your php framework, script or whatever. That's why I suggest to paste the response from curl, the headers and the response may contain relevant data. — ezra-s, Jan 10 '18 at 17:10
I included the output of the CURL command in my latest edit above. I will also include the only 2 lines that are present in my virtual host error.log file. I see what you are saying. I am just unsure why this application works fine when routed through Apache 2.2 utilizing the same configuration. It is only when routed through 2.4 that I see the 401 issue. — MotoDave452, Jan 10 '18 at 17:24
Also included my virtual host access.log file that shows the successive 200 responses, followed by the eventual 401. Keep in mind this ONLY happens on Apache 2.4. Apache 2.2 works fine. — MotoDave452, Jan 10 '18 at 17:35

score 3 · Answer 1 · edited Mar 02 '18 at 10:43

3

Do you have mod evasive enabled? This is used to block against DDOS attacks by blocking a certain number of repeat requests from the same IP address.

a2query -m evasive

If it is enabled, you could try to disable it or increase the threshold.

References:

Apache httpd throws intermittent 401 errors for same requests which pass otherwise | Stack Overflow

How to remove or disable mod_evasive from Apache Web Server? | Web Hosting Resource Kit

edited Mar 02 '18 at 10:43

answered Jan 09 '18 at 21:22

J Smith

76
4

Unfortunately we are not making using of 'mod_evasive'. Thank you for your suggestion though! – MotoDave452 Jan 10 '18 at 13:42

Freddy · Answer 2 · 2019-01-25T17:09:02.023

Have you tried adding keepalive=On to your ProxyPass?

    ProxyPass http://xx.x.x.xxx:8081/ApplicationName keepalive=On

See table "Worker|BalancerMember parameters" (scroll down) in https://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.4/mod/mod_proxy.html#proxypass.

The two default workers have a fixed configuration and will be used if no other worker matches the request. They do not use HTTP Keep-Alive or connection reuse. The TCP connections to the origin server will instead be opened and closed for each request.

(https://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.4/mod/mod_proxy.html#workers)

401 Unauthorized error when using Apache 2.4

2 Answers2