mod_proxy_balancer, balancer_manager questions

[Colin Murtaugh <cmurtaugh@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi --

I'm trying to set up a pair of tomcat servers behind apache using mod_proxy_balancer.  I'm using Apache 2.4.3 that I built a couple of days ago on Solaris. 

I see in the 2.4 docs that balancer settings can now be persistent after restarts.  I assume that this refers to changes to settings made via the balancer-manager UI, but I can't seem to get it to work.

Here's my config: 

<Proxy balancer://testcluster growth=5>

    BalancerMember http://localhost:8861 timeout=5 keepalive=on

    BalancerMember http://localhost:8871 timeout=5 keepalive=on

</Proxy>

ProxyPass /test balancer://testcluster

ProxyPassReverse /test balancer://testcluster

<Location /balancer-manager>

    SetHandler balancer-manager

</Location>

Load-balancing works as expected, but if I edit one of the two nodes via balancer-manager to set its status to 'disabled', the status returns to Ok after I restart apache. 

Similarly, if I add a new worker to the cluster via balancer-manager, it's gone after a restart.  In both of these cases, I expected the settings to be as I left them before the restart. 

Am I misunderstanding how the settings persistence is supposed to work, or is there something else I need to do in order to get the settings to be saved?

Additional question:

I have the timeout set to 5 seconds; if the back-end service takes longer than 5 seconds to finish, the proxy does abandon the request as expected, and I get an error in the browser.  Is there any way to have the proxy, when the back-end times out, retry the request against another one of the nodes? 

Failing that, is there a way to have the occurrence of a timeout put the node into the Err state?  

Let me know if there are any other details that would be helpful. 

Thanks!

--Colin