Swift and Nginx as loadbalancer

[Dmitry Ukov]

I'm experiencing Content-Length parameter issue when using nginx as a loadbalancer for Swift.

I've configured Swift with two proxies and nginx as loadbalancer.

nginx config :

upstream backend_storage {
  server swift-proxy1:8888 weight=3;
  server swift-proxy2:8888;
}

server {
  client_max_body_size 5000m;
  listen 8888;
  location / {
    proxy_pass http://backend_storage;
    proxy_read_timeout 120;
  }
}

proxy-server.conf

[filter:tempauth]
use = egg:swift#tempauth
user_system_root = testpass .admin http://loadbalancer:8888/v1/AUTH_system

Then I tried use Swift CLI client and got:
# swift -A http://locadbalancer:8888/v1.0 -U system:root -K testpass post testcontainer
Container PUT failed: http://loadbalancer:8888/v1/AUTH_system/testcontainer 411 Length Required

Nginx requires:
when someone do a PUT request, there should be Content-Length field in http header.
Then I've added in put_container function for swift CLI client
headers['Content-Length'] = 0

Now everything works fine.

Could you comment this error?

P.S. Actually HTTP protocol RFC does not requires Content-Length parameter in PUT request.

[Juan J. Martínez (jjmartinez)]

It looks like nginx is picky with PUT/POST requests without Content-Length header.

Reference: http://www.ruby-forum.com/topic/162976#715758

Using 0 as Content-Length doesn't look right, and you may have the same problem with any other client not setting Content-Length properly.

I gave up using nginx as swift load balancer. I'd recommend you using Pound instead: http://www.apsis.ch/pound

[Dmitry Ukov (dukov)]

Ok, I understand. Thanks a lot.