Bug#678504: apache2: "request failed: error reading the headers" with SSL and Firefox/13.0.1

[Sebastien Koechlin <seb.debianpkg@koocotte.org>]

Package: apache2.2-common
Version: 2.2.16-6+squeeze7
Severity: normal

I have this error while doing a POST of a large file on a VirtualHost using SSL.

error:

 [Wed Jun 20 12:10:31 2012] [error] [client 82.226.xx.xxx] request failed:
 error reading the headers, referer:
 https://xxx.example.org/Programme/integration_xxx_xxxxx.html

 [Wed Jun 20 12:12:50 2012] [error] [client 82.226.xx.xxx] request failed:
 error reading the headers, referer:
 https://xxx.example.org/Programme/integration_xxx_xxxxx.html

access log for the first (default) SSL virtual host. It was not the expected
virtualHost (probably because the host header was not properly parsed):

 82.226.xx.xxx 21913997 - [20/Jun/2012:12:10:09 +0200] "POST
 /Programme/transfert.php HTTP/1.1" 400 235
 "https://xxx.example.org/Programme/integration_xxx_xxxxx.html"; "Mozilla/5.0
 (Windows NT 6.0; rv:13.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/13.0.1"

 82.226.xx.xxx 22144249 - [20/Jun/2012:12:12:28 +0200] "POST
 /Programme/transfert.php HTTP/1.1" 400 235
 "https://xxx.example.org/Programme/integration_xxx_xxxxx.html"; "Mozilla/5.0
 (Windows NT 6.0; rv:13.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/13.0.1"

Everything was working fine for years; windows-Firefox and debian-Apache
updated at each release.

LogFormat "%h %D %u %t \"%r\" %>s %b \"%{Referer}i\" \"%{User-Agent}i\""

-- Package-specific info:
List of /etc/apache2/mods-enabled/*.load:
  actions alias auth_basic authn_file authnz_ldap authz_default
  authz_host authz_user autoindex-nuvola dav dav_fs dav_svn deflate
  dir env expires headers info ldap mime negotiation php5 proxy
  proxy_http reqtimeout rewrite setenvif ssl status wsgi
List of enabled php5 extensions:
  adodb apc curl gd imagick imap ldap mcrypt mysql mysqli pdo
  pdo_mysql pspell recode tidy xmlrpc xsl

-- System Information:
Debian Release: 6.0.5
  APT prefers stable
  APT policy: (500, 'stable')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)

Kernel: Linux 3.1.4.skc2 (SMP w/2 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash

Versions of packages apache2 depends on:
ii  apache2-mpm-prefork    2.2.16-6+squeeze7 Apache HTTP Server - traditional n
ii  apache2.2-common       2.2.16-6+squeeze7 Apache HTTP Server common files

apache2 recommends no packages.

apache2 suggests no packages.

Versions of packages apache2.2-common depends on:
ii  apache2-utils          2.2.16-6+squeeze7 utility programs for webservers
ii  apache2.2-bin          2.2.16-6+squeeze7 Apache HTTP Server common binary f
ii  libmagic1              5.04-5+squeeze2   File type determination library us
ii  lsb-base               3.2-23.2squeeze1  Linux Standard Base 3.2 init scrip
ii  mime-support           3.48-1            MIME files 'mime.types' & 'mailcap
ii  perl                   5.10.1-17squeeze3 Larry Wall's Practical Extraction 
ii  procps                 1:3.2.8-9squeeze1 /proc file system utilities

-- no debconf information