general/5032: when a network filesystem is unavailable,Apache returns access forbidden

[Paul Henson <he...@acm.org>]

>Number:         5032
>Category:       general
>Synopsis:       when a network filesystem is unavailable,Apache returns access forbidden
>Confidential:   no
>Severity:       non-critical
>Priority:       medium
>Responsible:    apache
>State:          open
>Class:          change-request
>Submitter-Id:   apache
>Arrival-Date:   Fri Sep 17 11:30:02 PDT 1999
>Last-Modified:
>Originator:     henson@acm.org
>Organization:
apache
>Release:        1.3.9
>Environment:
any OS that supports a network filesystem
>Description:
in http_request.c, get_path_info calls stat(). if stat() fails with any
error other than ENOENT, ENOTDIR, or EACCES, Apache returns
HTTP_FORBIDDEN.

if you're serving files from a network filesystem (NFS, AFS, DFS...)
when the filesystem is unavailable for whatever reason, stat()
will return ETIMEDOUT. this will result in an access forbidden page being
returned to the end-user. This is very confusing for the end-user,
and very annoying for the administrator who gets plagued
with complaints about misconfiguration.
>How-To-Repeat:
<NA>
>Fix:
I propose the following addition to get_path_info():

#if defined(ETIMEDOUT)
         else if (errno == ETIMEDOUT) {
           ap_log_rerror(APLOG_MARK, APLOG_ERR, r,
                        "access to %s timed out", r->uri);
           return HTTP_SERVICE_UNAVAILABLE;
       }
#endif

I believe the service unavailable error message is much more
indicative of the underlying problem.
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