simple two server (front end - back end) setup help

[Patrick Galbraith <pa...@patg.net>]

Hi there everyone,

I'm setting up a simple two server setup with mod_perl. I've tested 
static documents, and they work fine. The ones I have a rewrite rule for 
are served by the front end, and the ones not in the rule by the 
backend. The problem comes when I run perl scripts (via 
Apache::Registry). I tested these scripts by directly connecting to the 
the backend, and they work fine. I even wrote a simple hello world 
script. It works fine on the backend, but when run on the front end, 
it's blank. The other more full featured scripts give me:

The proxy server received an invalid response from an upstream server.

The proxy server could not handle the request GET /bin/brochure.pl.

Reason: Document contains no data

I suspect this has to do with the headers. When I add:

print "Content-type: text/html\n\n" to the simple test script, it runs, 
but is displayed as if it were plaintext.

My setup:

One server is just a mod_proxy/mod_rewrite setup to handle static 
content, and it's virtual host setting is this:

<VirtualHost test.testserver.com:80>
   ServerName test.testserver.com
   DocumentRoot /home/testserver/www
   TransferLog /usr/local/proxy-apache/logs/testserver_access_log
   ErrorLog /usr/local/proxy-apache/logs/testserver_error_log

   <Directory "/usr/testserver/www">
     Options MultiViews
     AllowOverride None
     Order allow,deny
     Allow from all
   </Directory>

   RewriteLog "/tmp/rewrite.log"
   RewriteLogLevel 9

   RewriteEngine on
   RewriteRule \.(gif|jpg|png|txt|html)$ - [L]
   RewriteRule ^/bin/(.*) http://127.0.0.1:8080/bin/$1 [P,L]
   ProxyPassReverse /  http://test.testserver.com:8080/bin
   ProxyPassReverse /bin http://127.0.0.1:8080/bin

</VirtualHost>
ProxyIOBufferSize 131072
ProxyReceiveBufferSize 0


And then the mod_perl enabled server is set up this way:

Listen 8080
...

NameVirtualHost *:8080
...

<VirtualHost *:8080>
   ServerName test.testserver.com
   DocumentRoot /home/testserver/www
   CustomLog /usr/local/perl-apache/logs/testserver-access_log assa
   ErrorLog /usr/local/perl-apache/logs/testserver-error_log

   <Directory "/home/testserver/www">
     Options MultiViews
   </Directory>
   <Directory "/home/testserver/www/bin">
     Options ExecCGI MultiViews
   </Directory>


   # Make sure we're being hit at www address so
   # cookies work.  We also allow 127.0.0.1 for use
   # by the front-end proxies.
   RewriteEngine On
   RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^test\.testserver\.com [NC]
   RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^127\.0\.0\.1 [NC]
   RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^$
   RewriteRule ^/(.*)       http://test.testserver.com/$1 [L,R=permanent]

   RewriteLog "/tmp/perl-dev-rewrite.log"
   RewriteLogLevel 9

   PerlRequire /home/testserver/perl/startup.pl
   AddHandler perl-script .pl
   PerlHandler Apache::Registry
   PerlModule Apache::ModuleConfig;
   PerlModule Apache::Request;
   PerlModule Apache::Cookie;
   PerlPostReadRequestHandler My::ProxyRemoteAddr

</VirtualHost>

What obvious thing am I doing wrong? It must be a simple change to get 
it to work, I suspect, as are most problems that take a long time to 
figure out! ;)

thank you in advance for any help!

regards,

Patrick
----------------------
Patrick Galbraith
Senior Software Developer
patrick@redweek.com
patg@patg.net capttofu@slashdot.org
206.719.2461