solprovider@xxxxxxxxxx wrote:
Apart from the good recommendations above, may I suggest three additional tools : 1) not browser-independent since it is a Firefox add-on, but try the LiveHttpHeaders add-on. Very easy to use, and it will show all the HTTP headers sent by Firefox when making a request, and all the HTTP headers returned by the server in the response. You can also save the captured headers in a text file for easier later comparisons. 2) install perl on you workstation, and use the "lwp-request" program that comes with it. That is a command-line utility program which allows you to compose a HTTP request with all the headers you want, and see the entire dialog between itself and the server (including headers, content if you wish, re-directs, whatever). I find this an invaluable tool when debugging apparently weird HTTP issues.On 10/7/08, Kynn Jones <kynnjo@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:Thanks for your help. ... SNIP ... In retrospect, I wish there had been an easier way for me to inspect the requests sent by each browser. I asked our sysadmin if there was a way to configure Apache temporarily (i.e. only for debugging purposes) to record all requests verbatim, but he did not know how to do this. What browser-independent Apache tools are there for this type of analysis? ... SNIP ... TIA! KynnI do not know any Apache tools for troubleshooting network communications. Others may have suggestions. Network sniffers|analyzers and tools for Windows and/or *nix tcpdump (*nix): logs all communications. WireShark (forked from Ethereal): logs/analyzes all communications telnet (*nix): Talk to any port. ssh (*nix): Talk to any port including encryption. Hyperterminal: Windows standard telnet program. putty: Windows client for telnet and ssh. The (poorly-named for enterprises) WireShark is probably best to see every communication -- includes ACKs and other control packets so you should understand (or will quickly learn) the intricacies of TCP/IP. WireShark logs every communication so filter by IP Address and packet type to isolate relevant communications. ssh (for *nix) and putty (for Windows) let you specify a port and type commands. I have used these to troubleshoot SMTP and HTTP issues. You need to type the entire request. For HTTP, this includes the GET or POST, headers, and content (for POST). Changing the User-Agent header will show responses for different browsers. You should probably use both. Use WireShark to learn everything the browsers are sending, then use a easier-to-control less-detailed client for testing. solprovider
3) This one takes some additional expertise :Install perl and mod_perl on the server, and create your own Apache perl add-on module to pre-process (or call it "filter", although you do not modify anything) all requests and all responses, dumping the HTTP headers to some logfile. That is probably the most powerful technique of all, because not only can you see what happens, but you can also easily modify any aspect of the request and/or the response to test things out.
That is my personal Swiss-army knife for Apache issues of all kinds. --------------------------------------------------------------------- The official User-To-User support forum of the Apache HTTP Server Project. See <URL:http://httpd.apache.org/userslist.html> for more info. To unsubscribe, e-mail: users-unsubscribe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx " from the digest: users-digest-unsubscribe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx For additional commands, e-mail: users-help@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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