"Invalid method in request" errors in Apache error log, was Re:

Please use a descriptive subject line. The whole point of this list is
to help people with errors, so "error" doesn't really stand out! :-)


On Wed, 27 Apr 2005, Octavian Rasnita wrote:

> I have found the following errors in the Apache's error log file. Does
> anyone know what they represent?
>
> [Wed Apr 27 13:15:15 2005] [error] [client 10.50.28.247] Invalid method in reques
t \x80C\x01\x03
> [Wed Apr 27 13:16:34 2005] [error] [client 10.50.28.247] Invalid method in reques
t \x80C\x01\x03
> [Wed Apr 27 13:16:42 2005] [error] [client 10.50.28.247] Invalid method in reques
t \x80C\x01\x03
> [Wed Apr 27 13:17:24 2005] [error] [client 10.50.28.247] Invalid method in reques
t \x16\x03
> [Wed Apr 27 13:17:30 2005] [error] [client 10.50.28.247] Invalid method in reques
t \x16\x03
>
> Ready ssh2: AES-12 VT100

Yes.

The represent problems.

You should fix them.



Har har har.


In order to fix this, you need to figure out where the error is coming
from. Your error log shows entries at 13:15-17 on 27 April; if you look
over the activity in the access log, you should see entries with nearly
the same timestamps. This should help you pin down what URL was being
called when the error happened.

Once you know the URL, you can take a look at the file that the URL
corresponds to to see what's wrong. From the messages above, there's no
way to know anything about the program -- is it even a Perl script? It
could be anything at all, we don't know from looking at this.

If you can pin down what file it is, you can try invoking that file
either through the URL or directly from the command line; you can run it
in a debugger to trace what's going on; you can, if it's a Perl script,
turn on CGI::Carp [1] so that the crash information is directed to the
browser in addition to the apache log; you can add print() statements to
help pin down where in the program things are going wrong; you can add
better "foo() or die( 'Cannot foo(): $!' )" debug statements in the code
so that the source of the problem reveals itself; etc.

But without taking the effort to trace through the apache log to figure
out what URL / file is causing this report, you can't take any of these
beginning steps towards solving your problem. So, go read your logs!


[1] See `perldoc CGI::Carp` for details, or just add this to your code:
use CGI::Carp qw( fatalsToBrowser );


--
Chris Devers