general/2235: Apache 1.2.6 loses POST data

[Rich Bowen <rb...@databeam.com>]

>Number:         2235
>Category:       general
>Synopsis:       Apache 1.2.6 loses POST data
>Confidential:   no
>Severity:       serious
>Priority:       medium
>Responsible:    apache
>State:          open
>Class:          sw-bug
>Submitter-Id:   apache
>Arrival-Date:   Fri May 15 12:00:01 PDT 1998
>Last-Modified:
>Originator:     rbowen@databeam.com
>Organization:
apache
>Release:        1.2.6
>Environment:
FreeBSD gw.databeam.com 2.2.2-RELEASE FreeBSD 2.2.2-RELEASE #0: Tue Sep  2 02:44
:38 EDT 1997
Compiler: GCC 2.7.2
Perl 5.004_04 running cgi process.
Apache 1.2.6 with mod_spelling installed (and no other "special" modules).
>Description:
Apache occasionally loses the POST data sent to it from a form.
Tested this with the following Perl code:

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;
my $buffer = read (STDIN, $buffer, $ENV{'CONTENT_LENGTH'});
print "Content-type: text/html\n\n";
if ($buffer)
{ print $buffer; }
else
{ print "No data!"; }

This CGI program was called, with POST data, from various browsers, including Netscape 3 and 4, IE 3 and 4, Lynx and Jeffrey Friedl's "WebGet".

Occasionally (perhaps 1 in 20 times) the CGI returned the "no data" message, indicating that the POST data was lost.  This behavior did appear to come in bursts - perhaps 5-10 negatives in a row, followed by 20-50 positives.
>How-To-Repeat:
Any HTML form posting data to the CGI program listed above.
>Fix:
No.
>Audit-Trail:
>Unformatted:
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