# 411 Length Required error **URL:** \ **Category:** NGINX\ **Created:** [August 17, 2008, 9:22am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/411-length-required-error/146073 "2008-08-17T09:22:57Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![yetanothergeek](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/y/8e8cbc/32.png) [@yetanothergeek](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/yetanothergeek)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2008, 9:22am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/411-length-required-error/146073/1 "2008-08-17T09:22:57Z")
Hello, I’ve been getting this error a lot in my testing. I never received it with Apache. I understand what the message say but not why it’s coming about. My headers being sent have length. Or is this message referring to content returned by PHP at the server end? I’m sure one of you experts here knows what’s going on with this. I only get it on POST requests and not most of my ajax calls (which are GET). Thanks for any help with tracking this down. I’m seeing it in Firebug and when it occurs I cannot see the real response content - even though content is indeed returned as well since it has effect on my javascript code and updates the screen. Weird. Chris 🙂 Response from server: 411 Length Required # 411 Length Required * * * nginx/0.6.32 Header sent to server using ajax (only removed some identity info, HOST line): User-Agent Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9.0.1) Gecko/2008072820 Firefox/3.0.1 Accept text/javascript, text/html, application/xml, text/xml, _/_ Accept-Language en-us,en;q=0.5 Accept-Encoding gzip,deflate Accept-Charset ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,\*;q=0.7 Keep-Alive 300 Connection keep-alive X-Requested-With XMLHttpRequest Content-Type application/x-www-form-urlencoded; charset=utf-8 Referer [http://www.xxxxx.com/](http://www.xxxxx.com/) Content-Length 269 Cookie ZZZZSession=3ce34bb3dbc257ff61405175f941f1d7 Pragma no-cache Cache-Control no-cache ---
**Author:** ![yetanothergeek](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/y/8e8cbc/32.png) [@yetanothergeek](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/yetanothergeek)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2008, 9:30am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/411-length-required-error/146073/2 "2008-08-17T09:30:33Z")
On Sun, Aug 17, 2008 at 02:14:18PM +0700, Chris S. wrote: > code and updates the screen. Weird. > Chris 🙂 Set error\_log level to info: error\_log /path/to/log info; Then nginx will log a reason. Now there are 3 reasons: “client sent invalid “Content-Length” header” “client sent … method without “Content-Length” header” “client sent “Transfer-Encoding: chunked” header” The last reason is nginx feature: it still does not support chunked body. ---
**Author:** ![yetanothergeek](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/y/8e8cbc/32.png) [@yetanothergeek](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/yetanothergeek)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2008, 3:51pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/411-length-required-error/146073/3 "2008-08-17T15:51:32Z")
Thanks Igor. I turned on info and it says the reason is client didn’t send “Content-Length” header. Now, why would Firefox (3) not do that? Is this common? I noticed in Firebug that the header sent ALSO has “Transfer-Encoding: chunked”. I had the same problem with Lightpd and using a Flash uploader but they refuse to fix it to ignore chunked, so I could not use it with Flash. One reason I switched to using nginx is that unlike Lighttpd it works with the flash uploader. So should I just ignore this as it still works as expected? But I cannot see content in Firebug, or maybe I need to force a header in JS code (maybe the mootools JS library mistakenly doesn’t set the Content Length hmm, I should explore that too.) Just a minefield. How is it that the server returns this error page but also I am getting the JSON data back as well? Chris 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![yetanothergeek](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/y/8e8cbc/32.png) [@yetanothergeek](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/yetanothergeek)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2008, 4:00pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/411-length-required-error/146073/4 "2008-08-17T16:00:54Z")
My mistake on that last message. I read the wrong headers info. It seems ngninx reports no Content-Length header was sent but according to Firebug these are the headers - note it says Content Length is present and chunked not mentioned… Host [www.xxxx.com](http://www.xxxx.com) User-Agent Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9.0.1) Gecko/2008072820 Firefox/3.0.1 Accept text/javascript, text/html, application/xml, text/xml, _/_ Accept-Language en-us,en;q=0.5 Accept-Encoding gzip,deflate Accept-Charset ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,\*;q=0.7 Keep-Alive 300 Connection keep-alive X-Requested-With XMLHttpRequest Content-Type application/x-www-form-urlencoded; charset=utf-8 Referer [http://www.xxxx.com/](http://www.xxxx.com/) Content-Length 120 Cookie XXXXXSession=3ce34bb3dbc257ff61405175f941f1d7 Pragma no-cache Cache-Control no-cache ---
**Author:** ![yetanothergeek](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/y/8e8cbc/32.png) [@yetanothergeek](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/yetanothergeek)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2008, 4:03pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/411-length-required-error/146073/5 "2008-08-17T16:03:50Z")
On Sun, Aug 17, 2008 at 08:53:55PM +0700, Chris S. wrote: > Accept-Encoding gzip,deflate > Accept-Charset ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,\*;q=0.7 > Keep-Alive 300 > Connection keep-alive > X-Requested-With XMLHttpRequest > Content-Type application/x-www-form-urlencoded; charset=utf-8 > Referer [http://www.xxxx.com/](http://www.xxxx.com/) > Content-Length 120 > Cookie XXXXXSession=3ce34bb3dbc257ff61405175f941f1d7 > Pragma no-cache > Cache-Control no-cache Then only nginx debug log or tcpdump will help. ---
**Author:** ![yetanothergeek](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/y/8e8cbc/32.png) [@yetanothergeek](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/yetanothergeek)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2008, 2:12am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/411-length-required-error/146073/6 "2008-08-18T02:12:19Z")
Ok. I used Wireshark and tracked this down. I’m posting here so that others will know why this happens. It is a result of poor behaviour in Firebug. In fact, if you click on the log tab to view request data and headers then Firebug actually re-submits the POST data a second (hidden) time to provide data to show you. Of course, since POST methods will update server data and could insert new database rows this is very bad of Firebug. It is treating the POST like a GET in this case where it should have logged the original POST reply data instead. I have posted a bug in their google group and hopefully someday they will give it some attention. When Firebug submits the second time it does NOT include the Content-Length header as it did at first, but it shows as though it did. This is why my page was correctly updated but an 411 error was shown in the Firebug log. The original response was not saved and the error was from the repeated POST request. Just something for people to be aware of. Chris 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![yetanothergeek](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/y/8e8cbc/32.png) [@yetanothergeek](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/yetanothergeek)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2008, 4:11pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/411-length-required-error/146073/7 "2008-08-17T16:11:27Z")
On Sun, Aug 17, 2008 at 08:40:39PM +0700, Chris S. wrote: > One reason I switched to using nginx is that unlike Lighttpd it works > with the flash uploader. > > So should I just ignore this as it still works as expected? But I > cannot see content in Firebug, or maybe I need to force a header in JS > code (maybe the mootools JS library mistakenly doesn’t set the Content > Length hmm, I should explore that too.) Just a minefield. How is it that > the server returns this error page but also I am getting the JSON data > back as well? nginx tests Content-Length absence before Transfer-Encoding, thus it logs this error, although the request is valid: it has either Transfer-Encoding or Content-Length. ---
**Author:** ![yetanothergeek](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/y/8e8cbc/32.png) [@yetanothergeek](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/yetanothergeek)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2008, 9:46am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/411-length-required-error/146073/8 "2008-11-28T09:46:34Z")
Here is a solution: [http://yonggang.blog.kingtch.com/2008/11/28/fix\_nginx\_411\_length\_required/](http://yonggang.blog.kingtch.com/2008/11/28/fix_nginx_411_length_required/) ---
**Author:** ![yetanothergeek](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/y/8e8cbc/32.png) [@yetanothergeek](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/yetanothergeek)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2008, 10:16am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/411-length-required-error/146073/9 "2008-11-28T10:16:20Z")
On Fri, Nov 28, 2008 at 09:46:34AM +0100, Rocky Zhang wrote: > Here is a solution: > [KingTch.com is for sale | HugeDomains](http://yonggang.blog.kingtch.com/2008/11/28/fix_nginx_411_length_required/) The patch is wrong, it simply drops chunked body. ---
**Author:** ![yetanothergeek](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/y/8e8cbc/32.png) [@yetanothergeek](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/yetanothergeek)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2008, 6:01am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/411-length-required-error/146073/10 "2008-08-18T06:01:08Z")
Hi all I’m having a similar issue. In Firebug, the Request Headers Content-Length shows 112. However, I got the 411 Content Length Required response. Does any of the experts here know what’s going on? Thanks in advance! Request Headers Host [www.xxxxx.com](http://www.xxxxx.com) User-Agent Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.5; en-US; rv:1.9.0.1) Gecko/2008070206 Firefox/3.0.1 Accept text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,_/_;q=0.8 Accept-Language en-us,en;q=0.5 Accept-Encoding gzip,deflate Accept-Charset ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,\*;q=0.7 Keep-Alive 300 Connection keep-alive X-Requested-With XMLHttpRequest Content-Type application/x-www-form-urlencoded; charset=UTF-8 Referer [xxxxx.com](http://www.xxxxxx.com/people/1/edit) Content-Length 112 Cookie \_xxxxxx\_session=BAh7CjoPbGFzdF9sb2dpbnU6CVRpbWUNhh0bgAAAEI86EHJlcXVlc3RfdXJp%250AMDoMY3NyZl9pZCIlNWM1ZmYxZjlmZWQ2YmJmNTM2YWJlOGQwOGE0MjhkZDIi%250ACmZsYXNoSUM6J0FjdGlvbkNvbnRyb2xsZXI6OkZsYXNoOjpGbGFzaEhhc2h7%250AAAY6CkB1c2VkewA6CXVzZXJvOjVBY3RpdmVSZWNvcmQ6OkFzc29jaWF0aW9u%250Aczo6QmVsb25nc1RvQXNzb2NpYXRpb24JOgtAb3duZXJvOgtEZXRhaWwIOgxA%250AcGVyc29uQAs6EEBhdHRyaWJ1dGVzewsiFXdvcmxkX3Zpc2liaWxpdHkiD2V2%250AZXJ5dGhpbmciFWluZm9ybWF0aW9uX3R5cGUiEUVtYWlsQWRkcmVzcyIPdXBk%250AYXRlZF9vbiIYMjAwOC0wOC0wNCAwNTo0OToxNSIHaWQiBjIiE2luZm9ybWF0%250AaW9uX2lkIgYxIg5wZXJzb25faWQiBjE6FkBhdHRyaWJ1dGVzX2NhY2hlewA6%250ADEBsb2FkZWRUOgxAdGFyZ2V0bzoJVXNlchc6JUBkZXRhaWxfbWVtYmVyc2hp%250AcF9yZWxhdGlvbnNoaXBzMDopQHVzZXJfcHJvZmlsZV9lbWFpbF9hZGRyZXNz%250AX3JlcXVlc3RzMDoTQGhpc3RvcnlfaXRlbXMwOxB7CiIPYWNjb3VudF9pZCIG%250AMSIVb3B0aW9uYWxfZGF0ZV9pZDAiCXR5cGUiCVVzZXIiB2lkIgYxIgxuYW1l%250AX2lkIgYxOg1AYWNjb3VudDA6KEB1c2VyX3Byb2ZpbGVfZW1haWxfYWRkcmVz%250Ac19yZXF1ZXN0MDoNQGRldGFpbHMwOiNAZGV0YWlsX2VtYWlsX2FkZHJlc3Nf%250AcmVxdWVzdHMwOhBAYmlydGhfZGF0ZTA6FEBncm91cHNfbWFuYWdlZDA6HEBl%250AbWFpbF9hZGRyZXNzX3JlcXVlc3RzMDodQG1hbmFnZXJfc3RhdHVzX3JlcXVl%250Ac3RzMDsRewA6DEBncm91cHMwOitAZGVsZXRlX3ByaW1hcnlfZW1haWxfYWRk%250AcmVzc19yZXF1ZXN0czA6EUBtZW1iZXJzaGlwczA6IUBncm91cF9tYW5hZ2Vy%250AX3JlbGF0aW9uc2hpcHMwOgpAbmFtZTA6EEByZWZsZWN0aW9ubzo0QWN0aXZl%250AUmVjb3JkOjpSZWZsZWN0aW9uOjpBc3NvY2lhdGlvblJlZmxlY3Rpb24NOhhA%250AdGhyb3VnaF9yZWZsZWN0aW9uRjoTQGFjdGl2ZV9yZWNvcmRjC0RldGFpbDoQ%250AQGNsYXNzX25hbWUiC1BlcnNvbjoLQGtsYXNzYwtQZXJzb246C0BtYWNybzoP%250AYmVsb25nc190bzoNQG9wdGlvbnN7ADskOgtwZXJzb246FkBwcmltYXJ5X2tl%250AeV9uYW1lIg5wZXJzb25faWQ%253D–2bd2eb7eff4dcf6d5f1b8290df567298516fbfe9; connection=efa9ce4469ee3f84e8488d939c6e82d4; email\_address=xxx%[40xxx.com](http://40xxx.com) Chris S. wrote: > Ok. I used Wireshark and tracked this down. I’m posting here so that > others will know why this happens. It is a result of poor behaviour in > Firebug. > > In fact, if you click on the log tab to view request data and headers > then Firebug actually re-submits the POST data a second (hidden) time to > provide data to show you. Of course, since POST methods will update > server data and could insert new database rows this is very bad of > Firebug. It is treating the POST like a GET in this case where it should > have logged the original POST reply data instead. I have posted a bug in > their google group and hopefully someday they will give it some > attention. > > When Firebug submits the second time it does NOT include the > Content-Length header as it did at first, but it shows as though it did. > This is why my page was correctly updated but an 411 error was shown in > the Firebug log. The original response was not saved and the error was > from the repeated POST request. > > Just something for people to be aware of. > > Chris 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![yetanothergeek](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/y/8e8cbc/32.png) [@yetanothergeek](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/yetanothergeek)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2008, 4:50pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/411-length-required-error/146073/11 "2008-11-28T16:50:29Z")
I’ve updated the patch in this way. you can check it in the same blog post. Rocky Zhang wrote: > Yes. If there is no chunked body, it works fine. If there is, we could > check its request header information and close it if we haven’t > implemented chunked body feature. Could we patch it? > > Igor S. wrote: > > > On Fri, Nov 28, 2008 at 09:46:34AM +0100, Rocky Zhang wrote: > > > > > Here is a solution: > > > [KingTch.com is for sale | HugeDomains](http://yonggang.blog.kingtch.com/2008/11/28/fix_nginx_411_length_required/) > > > > The patch is wrong, it simply drops chunked body. ---
**Author:** ![yetanothergeek](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/y/8e8cbc/32.png) [@yetanothergeek](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/yetanothergeek)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2008, 5:04pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/411-length-required-error/146073/12 "2008-11-28T17:04:31Z")
On Fri, Nov 28, 2008 at 04:26:29PM +0100, Rocky Zhang wrote: > Yes. If there is no chunked body, it works fine. If there is, we could > check its request header information and close it if we haven’t > implemented chunked body feature. Could we patch it? I do not understand what yuo want to get. Currently nginx does not support a chunked request body and returns 411 error code for such requests. Also nginx returns the 411 error if a POST/PUT request has no “Content-Length”. If the request has no body, then it must send “Content-Length: 0”. ---
**Author:** ![yetanothergeek](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/y/8e8cbc/32.png) [@yetanothergeek](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/yetanothergeek)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2008, 3:15am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/411-length-required-error/146073/13 "2008-11-29T03:15:07Z")
Unfortunately I found that when I use POST method to request an AJAX function, the browser sends a request with neither body nor “Content-Length: 0”. Igor S. wrote: > On Fri, Nov 28, 2008 at 04:26:29PM +0100, Rocky Zhang wrote: > > > Yes. If there is no chunked body, it works fine. If there is, we could > > check its request header information and close it if we haven’t > > implemented chunked body feature. Could we patch it? > > I do not understand what yuo want to get. > > Currently nginx does not support a chunked request body and returns > 411 error code for such requests. > > Also nginx returns the 411 error if a POST/PUT request has no > “Content-Length”. > If the request has no body, then it must send “Content-Length: 0”. ---
**Author:** ![yetanothergeek](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/y/8e8cbc/32.png) [@yetanothergeek](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/yetanothergeek)\ **Post date:** [December 1, 2008, 3:41pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/411-length-required-error/146073/14 "2008-12-01T15:41:13Z")
It sounds like that browser is not spec compliant. You may have to fake a body by sending a form encoded parameter just to generate a dummy body. Dave ---
**Author:** ![yetanothergeek](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/y/8e8cbc/32.png) [@yetanothergeek](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/yetanothergeek)\ **Post date:** [December 1, 2008, 3:48pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/411-length-required-error/146073/15 "2008-12-01T15:48:20Z")
On Tue, Dec 02, 2008 at 01:34:36AM +1100, Dave C. wrote: > It sounds like that browser is not spec compliant. You may have to > fake a body by sending a form encoded parameter just to generate a > dummy body. It seems that Apache allowed always such requests (POSTs without Content-Length). I’m not sure should I add this ? ---
**Author:** ![yetanothergeek](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/y/8e8cbc/32.png) [@yetanothergeek](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/yetanothergeek)\ **Post date:** [December 1, 2008, 5:33pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/411-length-required-error/146073/16 "2008-12-01T17:33:39Z")
I think AJAX will work well with nginx if you add this. Maybe my patch may do a little thing for you? FYI, this problem will happen on both IE 7 and Firefox 3.0.4. Igor S. wrote: > On Tue, Dec 02, 2008 at 01:34:36AM +1100, Dave C. wrote: > > > It sounds like that browser is not spec compliant. You may have to > > fake a body by sending a form encoded parameter just to generate a > > dummy body. > > It seems that Apache allowed always such requests (POSTs without > Content-Length). I’m not sure should I add this ? ---
**Author:** ![yetanothergeek](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/y/8e8cbc/32.png) [@yetanothergeek](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/yetanothergeek)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2008, 4:26pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/411-length-required-error/146073/17 "2008-11-28T16:26:29Z")
Yes. If there is no chunked body, it works fine. If there is, we could check its request header information and close it if we haven’t implemented chunked body feature. Could we patch it? Igor S. wrote: > On Fri, Nov 28, 2008 at 09:46:34AM +0100, Rocky Zhang wrote: > > > Here is a solution: > > [KingTch.com is for sale | HugeDomains](http://yonggang.blog.kingtch.com/2008/11/28/fix_nginx_411_length_required/) > > The patch is wrong, it simply drops chunked body. ---
**Author:** ![yetanothergeek](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/y/8e8cbc/32.png) [@yetanothergeek](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/yetanothergeek)\ **Post date:** [December 2, 2008, 1:46am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/411-length-required-error/146073/18 "2008-12-02T01:46:29Z")
> It seems that Apache allowed always such requests (POSTs without > Content-Length). I’m not sure should I add this ? Looking into the RFC’s it looks like Apache might be doing the right thing. RFC1945: A valid Content-Length is required on all HTTP/1.0 POST requests. An HTTP/1.0 server should respond with a 400 (bad request) message if it cannot determine the length of the request message’s content. RFC2616: The presence of a message-body in a request is signaled by the inclusion of a Content-Length or Transfer-Encoding header field in the request’s message-headers So, POST /someurl HTTP/1.1 Host: whatever \r\n \r\n Is a valid post request, but only in the case that the request does not contain a body. If the post does contain a body, then it must be identified as such with a Content-Lenth: header. Cheers Dave ---
**Author:** ![yetanothergeek](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/y/8e8cbc/32.png) [@yetanothergeek](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/yetanothergeek)\ **Post date:** [December 2, 2008, 2:18am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/411-length-required-error/146073/19 "2008-12-02T02:18:38Z")
On Mon, Dec 1, 2008 at 6:38 AM, Igor S. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote: > It seems that Apache allowed always such requests (POSTs without > Content-Length). I’m not sure should I add this ? I can vouch that we’ve been bitten by that before with AJAX, during switchovers from straight Apache to nginx reverse proxying for Apache. We’ve got a much bigger switchover in the works and I’ve though about removing NGX\_HTTP\_POST from src/http/ngx\_http\_request.c (line 1414 in 0.7.22, so it’d just apply to PUT). Having a switch to turn off the No Content Length check for POSTs would be most excellent. ---
**Author:** ![yetanothergeek](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/y/8e8cbc/32.png) [@yetanothergeek](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/yetanothergeek)\ **Post date:** [December 2, 2008, 10:36am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/411-length-required-error/146073/20 "2008-12-02T10:36:25Z")
On Mon, Dec 01, 2008 at 05:08:50PM -0800, Mark M. wrote: > Content Length check for POSTs would be most excellent. > I thought about the same, here is patch. [Next page](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/411-length-required-error/146073.md?page=2)