Re: "proxy_balancer" | stickysession

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On 29.09.2010 16:53, King Holger (CI/AFP2) wrote:
Dear mailing list,

currently, we use the Apache2 version:
- Apache2 2.2.16 64bit
- standard "mod_proxy_balancer" module

with the following V-HOST configuration including a proxy balancer directive (with two Apache Tomcat instances behind):
<Proxy balancer://fs4server>
     BalancerMember ajp://rb-wcmstc1.xx.xxxxx.xxx:8009 loadfactor=100 retry=10 route=rb-wcmstc1
     BalancerMember ajp://rb-wcmstc2.xx.xxxxx.xxx:8009 loadfactor=100 retry=10 route=rb-wcmstc2

     ProxySet stickysession=JSESSIONID
     ProxySet lbmethod=byrequests
     #ProxySet nofailover=On
     ProxySet timeout=30
</Proxy>

In production environment, we discover connection switches from "rb-wcmstc1" to "rb-wcmstc2" and vice versa (documented in the Tomcat-Logs) for the same Session-ID:

"rb-wcmstc1"
tomcat@<rb-wcmstc1>:/opt/tomcat/logs $ grep -i "5893975846599935313" *
log4j-catalina.log.13:TRACE 29.09.2010 14:16:58 (de.espirit.firstspirit.io.servlet.ClientIOServlet): Opening connection to 10.35.32.123, id=5893975846599935313
log4j-catalina.log.13:TRACE 29.09.2010 14:16:58 (de.espirit.firstspirit.io.servlet.ClientIOServlet): Server call from 10.35.32.123, id=5893975846599935313, clientLength=82, serverLength=79, serverResponseLength=1, 455 ms

"rb-wcmstc2"
DEBUG 29.09.2010 14:16:58 (de.espirit.firstspirit.io.servlet.ClientIOServlet): IO error with 10.35.32.123, port=1088, host=rb-wcmsfs4.de.bosch.com - java.
lang.IllegalStateException: Connection '5893975846599935313' not found
java.lang.IllegalStateException: Connection '5893975846599935313' not found
         at de.espirit.firstspirit.io.servlet.ClientIOServlet.callServer(ClientIOServlet.java:194)
         at de.espirit.firstspirit.io.servlet.ClientIOServlet.doPost(ClientIOServlet.java:117)
         at javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet.service(HttpServlet.java:637)
         at javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet.service(HttpServlet.java:717)

Although, the "stickysession" attribute is set properly using the "JSESSIONID" cookie name and the Apache-Tomcat instances are up and running, the connection SWITCHES. Why?

How does stickyness work?
=========================

First it can use a cookie value or a value encoded in a URL. Java webapps usually use a cookie named JSESSIONID, but when the client doesn't support cookies, or if cookie usage is disabled on e.g. Tomcat, it switches to URL encoding. Tomcat sometimes uses URL encoding when it doesn't yet know, whether the client will support the cookie. URL encoded session info is appended using ";jsessionid=...". Note the lower case in the name of the id.

Since mod_proxy_balancer checks for the URL encoding and the cookie using case sensitive strings, you need to configure both using the syntax:

stickysession=JSESSIONID|jsessionid

This is just to make sure, that an occasional URL encoded session info is found as well.

Now by default mod_proxy_balancer looks for the URL encoded session info as a parameter appended using "?" or "&", so as part of the query string. Java Enterprise appends it using ";". To add that character to the search list, you have to also set "scolonpathdelim On". Again this is only necessary for occasional URL encoded sessions.

Now that mod_proxy_balancer can find the needed tokens (i.e. the value of the JSESSIONID cookie, resp. the ;jsessionid URL encoded session info), how does it detect the backend it should send the request to?

If there is a dot (".") in the token (session id), it only uses the part after the dot as the "route", if not it uses the complete token.

Now it knows the "route" where it should send the request to it looks for a balancer member, which has the same value set as its "route". In the above example "rb-wcmstc1" respectively "rb-wcmstc2". This member will handle the request - if the member is available, i.e. not broken or disabled.

Finally: in order to let Tomcat attach the needed route to the end of the session id you need to set the jvmRoute attribute in server.xml to the respective route value.


How to track failures
=====================

1) Check whether your Tomcats send the correct route in the session id.

Look at the JSESSIONID cookie in the browser, whether it has ".rb-wcmstc1" resp. ".rb-wcmstc2" attached at the end of the id value.


2) Log the session ids send by the clients, and the session id set by the server.

Activate the Tomcat access log and change the pattern to include

"%S &quot;%{Cookie}i&quot; &quot;%{Set-Cookie}o&quot;"

Change your log format for the Apache access log using CustomLog and add

"%{JSESSIONID}C" "%{Set-Cookie}o"

or even

"%{Cookie}i" "%{JSESSIONID}C" "%{Set-Cookie}o"

On the docs page

http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/mod/mod_proxy_balancer.html#environment

you will also find a list of Apache environment variables useful for debugging when adding to the log format, e.g.

%{BALANCER_SESSION_STICKY}e %{BALANCER_SESSION_ROUTE}e %{BALANCER_WORKER_NAME}e %{BALANCER_WORKER_ROUTE}e %{BALANCER_ROUTE_CHANGED}e


3) Switch Apache to debug log level

CAUTION: High log volume by mod_proxy and also mod_ssl if used.

It will log e.g.

proxy: BALANCER: Found value <TOKEN> for stickysession <IS_STICKY>

(that's the token contained in the request)

proxy: BALANCER: Found route <ROUTE>

(that's the route info from the token, e.g. stripping everything in front of a dot)

proxy: BALANCER: Route changed from <NEEDED> to <USED>

(if there is no worker available for the route <NEEDED>, the worker which will be used instead is <USED>).


Final remarks
=============

You look for the string "5893975846599935313" in your above log snippets. That does not look like a Tomcat session id. It doesn't have the trailing route and it is purely decimal numeric, whereas a Tomcat session id is hexadecimal. It is very unlikely that there are no [A-F] digits in it.

Regards,

Rainer

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