Topic: Remove "Connection and keep-alive" response header

[deepakc3]

How can i remove "Connection and keep-alive" from response headers ?
I am using Apache http server to load balance two tomcat nodes
Apache Server- Apache/2.4.2
mod_jk - 1.2.27
Apache tomcat - Apache Tomcat/7.0.23
JDK - 1.6

I have also enabled SSL in the apache http server using mod_ssl.
The load balancing works fine, but in all the response headers these connection attributes are added
"Connection: keep-alive
keep-alive: timeout=5"

Is there a way to remove these headers? I do not want these headers to be added in the response.
I have also tried mod_header to unset these headers, but no use.
HTTP/1.1 protocol is being used, so eventhough the connection is not present in the header, the connection would should be considered as persistent. Why is apache sending these attributes explicitly in each response. I just want to get rid of these attribute...

[James Blond]

Search in your apache config files for KeepAlive On change that to KeepAlive Off.
If you can't find that in your config file, just add at the end KeepAlive Off.

[deepakc3]

Even if i set KeepAlive off, I get the Connection attribute in the response header as
"Connection: close"

I just wanted to remove this attribute completely.

[James Blond]

What is so bad about that header?

removing that header will break the HTTP/1.1 connection
it is a MUST for a connection to the server.

---- edit ----

There is a bug report that by design you can't remove some header from apache by design.

https://issues.apache.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=40026

[deepakc3]

No, removing that header will not break the HTTP/1.1 connection. In HTTP/1.1 it is not required to explicitly say that the connection is keep-alive, because it keep-alive by default.

Other load balancers like NetScaler is not sending these keep-alive header eventhough they are using HTTP/1.1 protocol.

The thing bad about this header is,
iphone sdk API has a wierd issue in reusing the socket connection, which closes the connection when i have the keep-alive (whatever high the timeout is) in the header. It works fine, if this header is not present. I will not be able to fix this issue now, so i wanted to remove the "Connection" and "keep-alive" from header.

[christoz777]

Did you ever find a solution? I am in the same exact situation.

We have implemented the PRG pattern (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post/Redirect/Get) using JSF/Seam. The issue is that in the ajax-response for the redirect (the "R" in "PRG") apache is inserting "Connection=Keep-Alive". However, Safari and Firefox are not adding in the "Connection=Keep-Alive" header on the subsequent get request (the "G" in "PRG") and this is causing apache to not return anything for that request.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Thanks

[deepakc3]

No i haven't found a way to remove the "Connection=Keep-Alive" from header.
As far as i have analyzed you don't have an option to remove the 'Connection' attribute from header.

[christoz777]

Thanks for your reply. What did you end up doing to workaround it? Our situations are not the same as your are using iphone sdk and my issues is around jsf/seam/java. Just curious.