mod_proxy_ajp serves pages as content_type: application/octet-stream sometimes

["james" <james@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I cannot figure out what causes this but at times every 3rd load Firefox will load the page as a file download of type application/octet-stream and internet explorer usually just downloads the page as a notepad document. The IE issue is more repeatable but sometimes it just loads the page with incorrect formatting. At other times this works for days on end, or so it seems.

I thought this was due to apache httpd losing connection to to the tomcat server and defaulting to some strange behavior because we are getting errors in the apache file (below) when the tomcat server reboots every morning but now I am not so sure. A httpd service restart has fixed the problem in the past (or so it seemed), but this morning the problem occurred, I verified and turned off the httpd proxy from external address, yet I cannot replicate the issue though I have not restarted the httpd service yet. So I am not sure what causes this issue or how to fix it permanently since it seems to resolve itself. We get the apache error every morning and I do not restart httpd and it seems to still work so I'm not sure it is related.

The DefaultType in httpd.conf is set to: DefaultType text/plain. I had seen that as a potential problem in other posts but since ours is being served as application

The apache errors go like this:

[Mon Feb 18 04:30:08 2013] [error] ajp_read_header: ajp_ilink_receive failed
[Mon Feb 18 04:30:08 2013] [error] (120006)APR does not understand this error code: proxy: dialog to 192.168.1.216:8109 (192.168.1.216) failed
[Mon Feb 18 04:30:08 2013] [error] ajp_read_header: ajp_ilink_receive failed
[Mon Feb 18 04:30:08 2013] [error] (120006)APR does not understand this error code: proxy: dialog to 192.168.1.216:8109 (192.168.1.216) failed
[Mon Feb 18 04:30:09 2013] [error] (111)Connection refused: proxy: AJP: attempt to connect to 192.168.1.216:8109 (192.168.1.216) failed
[Mon Feb 18 04:30:09 2013] [error] ap_proxy_connect_backend disabling worker for (192.168.1.216)
[Mon Feb 18 04:30:09 2013] [error] proxy: AJP: failed to make connection to backend: 192.168.1.216
[Mon Feb 18 04:30:11 2013] [error] proxy: AJP: disabled connection for (192.168.1.216)
[Mon Feb 18 04:30:15 2013] [error] proxy: AJP: disabled connection for (192.168.1.216)
[Mon Feb 18 04:30:15 2013] [error] proxy: AJP: disabled connection for (192.168.1.216)
[Mon Feb 18 04:30:24 2013] [error] proxy: AJP: disabled connection for (192.168.1.216)
[Mon Feb 18 04:30:29 2013] [error] proxy: AJP: disabled connection for (192.168.1.216)
[Mon Feb 18 04:30:33 2013] [error] proxy: AJP: disabled connection for (192.168.1.216)
[Mon Feb 18 04:30:34 2013] [error] proxy: AJP: disabled connection for (192.168.1.216)
[Mon Feb 18 04:30:44 2013] [error] proxy: AJP: disabled connection for (192.168.1.216)
[Mon Feb 18 04:31:10 2013] [error] ajp_read_header: ajp_ilink_receive failed
[Mon Feb 18 04:31:10 2013] [error] (120006)APR does not understand this error code: proxy: dialog to 192.168.1.216:8109 (192.168.1.216) failed

The proxy setup looks like:

<Virtualhost *:80>
    ServerName www.somesite.com
    ServerAlias somesite.com
    ErrorLog /var/log/httpd/www.somesite.com-error.log
    CustomLog /var/log/httpd/www.somesite.com.log combined
    Options Indexes

    ProxyRequests Off
    ProxyPass / ajp://192.168.1.216:8109/
    ProxyTimeout 6000
</Virtualhost>