>Number: 877 >Category: general >Synopsis: apache dies if name servers become unreachable >Confidential: no >Severity: serious >Priority: medium >Responsible: apache (Apache HTTP Project) >State: open >Class: change-request >Submitter-Id: apache >Arrival-Date: Thu Jul 17 09:40:01 1997 >Originator: [EMAIL PROTECTED] >Organization: apache >Release: 1.2.1 >Environment: Doesn't matter, but we're using BSDI BSD/OS 2.1. >Description: In apache 1.2.0, code was added to http_main.c:default_server_hostnames() that dies if it can't resolve ServerName. It also uses the value of gethostbyname on that name to initialize the list of virtual addresses for the main server. We run around 1000 apache servers for various customers, many of whom have DNS that we don't control. Some of them change their DNS to point to servers other than ours for awhile, or their name servers become unreachable periodically (like today, when the root name servers became corrupted). We specify BindAddress to force the IP address; we don't want ServerName used for that, because it's unreliable. And apache should not die when there's a name server problem! We don't want to set ServerName to an IP address because that would make redirects and imagemaps ugly for users of all our servers. >How-To-Repeat: In httpd.conf, put ServerName foo.xyz BindAddress a-valid-ipaddr-on-the-machine >Fix: If BindAddress is given, ServerName should be used just textually, and not resolved >Audit-Trail: >Unformatted:
