Issue with If-Range header and X-Accel-Redirect requests with upstream Last-Modified header

Server NGINX
1

Hi,

I have nginx 1.0.5 set up as a proxy in front of a Ruby/Ramaze
application, using X-Accel-Redirect to efficiently handle sending large
binary files by handing those transfers over to nginx. Range requests
against this setup work just fine, but “If-Range” headers from the
client are ignored – the server always returns the requested range,
even when the If-Range date doesn’t match the file’s Last-Modified date.

The problem seems to be due to this line in our config:

add_header Last-Modified $upstream_http_last_modified;

This sets the Last-Modified date on file sent to the client to the value
sent to nginx from Ruby. With this line in the config, I get the
If-Range issue described above. If I comment this out, Last-Modified is
taken from the file’s mtime instead, but If-Range works.

Is there any chance of getting this fixed?

Thanks
Leigh

2

Hello!

On Tue, Sep 06, 2011 at 12:45:46PM +1000, Leigh D. wrote:

The problem seems to be due to this line in our config:

add_header Last-Modified $upstream_http_last_modified;

This sets the Last-Modified date on file sent to the client to the
value sent to nginx from Ruby. With this line in the config, I get
the If-Range issue described above. If I comment this out,
Last-Modified is taken from the file’s mtime instead, but If-Range
works.

Is there any chance of getting this fixed?

Please try the attached patch.

Maxim D.

3

On 6/09/11 12:45 PM, Leigh D. wrote:

Hi,

I have nginx 1.0.5 set up as a proxy in front of a Ruby/Ramaze
application, using X-Accel-Redirect to efficiently handle sending large
binary files by handing those transfers over to nginx. Range requests
against this setup work just fine, but “If-Range” headers from the
client are ignored – the server always returns the requested range,
even when the If-Range date doesn’t match the file’s Last-Modified date.

Hi again,

I spent some time looking in to this and created a patch that seems to
fix the problem for me. The issue was in “ngx_http_set_last_modified” in
http/modules/ngx_http_headers_filter_module.c – last_modified_time gets
set to -1 and is then never updated with the new value.

I have no idea how correct this patch is, so I’d greatly appreciate it
if someone could review this for me.

Thanks
Leigh

4

Leigh,

You don’t need to be silly at all. Thanks a lot for spotting this one.

–
Andrew A.
w. http://nginx.org

5

On 6/09/11 4:50 PM, Maxim D. wrote:

Hello!

Please try the attached patch.

Thanks Maxim – your patch has fixed the problem for me. I feel a little
silly for spending the time to come up with my own patch, but at least I
know more about nginx now than I did this morning :slight_smile:

Thanks
Leigh