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CLM: HTTP Bad Request (Request header too long)

Article ID: 955585 - View products that this article applies to.

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Action

Customer is unable to perform all operations in the CLM portal.

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Result

With friendly http error messages enabled in Internet Explorer, HTTP 400 errors will be returned in response to web requests being sent to the Internet Information Services (IIS) server.
With friendly http error messages disabled in Internet Explorer, the following error message is returned to the user:

Bad Request (Request header too long)

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The HTTP request that was sent to the IIS server had a request header that exceeded the allowable request header length configured on the IIS server. Specifically, the Authorization header contained a very large Kerberos authentication ticket. The kerberos ticket was so large because the user is a member of many groups in Active Directory.

For security purposes, the HTTP.sys component on the IIS server rejects the incoming HTTP request because it exceeds the configured size limits.

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Resolution

Configure the HTTP registry keys MaxFieldLength and MaxRequestBytes on the IIS server to allow for larger request header sizes.

IMPORTANT: Changing these registry keys is considered extremely dangerous. Increasing these keys' values will cause HTTP.sys to use more memory and may increase vulnerability to malicious attacks. If changing these keys is your only option, do not set their values larger than they need to be. Information on determining how large the request headers are and therefore what value to set the registry keys is found later in this article.

For more information on the HTTP.sys registry keys for IIS, please see the following article:

Http.sys registry settings for IIS (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/820129

(http://support.microsoft.com/kb/820129)

)

For more information on HTTP.sys error logging, please see the following article:

Error logging in HTTP API (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/820729

(http://support.microsoft.com/kb/820729)

)

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More Information

To determine the actual HTTP request size, it can be helpful to use a network monitor trace. With this trace, we can calculate the size of the http request and compare it against the setting on the IIS server.

It is also useful to consult the HTTP.sys error log for information.

Location: %windir%\system32\logfiles\HTTPERR\httperrX.log

Determining HTTP Request Size

The key to resolving this particular problem, was to show that CLM was trying to send a HTTP request to the server that is greater than either the default value of 16k, or greater than the custom setting in their MaxFieldLength & MaxRequestBytes. To do this, we can use a combination of:

Network monitor trace
Looking through the http.sys error log located in:

a. %windir%\system32\logfiles\HTTPERR\httperrX.log.

Example Entry from the httperrX.log:

date time c-ip c-port s-ip s-port cs-version cs-method cs-uri sc-status s-siteid s-reason s-queuename
2007-04-12 07:37:51 10.201.25.27 1682 10.248.10.65 80 HTTP/1.1 GET /clm 400 - RequestLength

Netmon3

In the netmon trace, to determine how large the HTTP request is, use the following steps:

Locate the frame that submits an HTTP Get statement
Add the TCP Len value for each frame from the HTTP Get statement until the IIS server returns an ACK

This will be the size of the HTTP request.

Example:

28209 19:13:04.041 53.906250 Client Server HTTP HTTP: Request, GET /CLM/content/sm/requests/SubscriberPrintDocuments.aspx

28210 19:13:04.041 53.906250 Client Server HTTP HTTP: HTTP Payload

28210 19:13:04.041 53.906250 Client Server HTTP HTTP: HTTP Payload

28211 19:13:04.041 53.906250 Client Server HTTP HTTP: HTTP Payload

28212 19:13:04.041 53.906250 Client Server HTTP HTTP: HTTP Payload

28213 19:13:04.041 53.906250 Client Server HTTP HTTP: HTTP Payload

28214 19:13:04.041 53.906250 Client Server HTTP HTTP: HTTP Payload

28215 19:13:04.041 53.906250 Client Server HTTP HTTP: HTTP Payload

28216 19:13:04.041 53.906250 Client Server HTTP HTTP: HTTP Payload

28217 19:13:04.041 53.906250 Client Server HTTP HTTP: HTTP Payload

28218 19:13:04.041 53.906250 Client Server HTTP HTTP: HTTP Payload

28219 19:13:04.041 53.906250 Client Server HTTP HTTP: HTTP Payload

28220 19:13:04.041 53.906250 Client Server HTTP HTTP: HTTP Payload

Each of the above will have a detail line similar to the following:

Tcp: Flags=....A..., SrcPort=3281, DstPort=HTTP(80), Len=1460, Seq=3225410770 - 3225412230, Ack=1377780890, Win=33580 (scale factor 0) = 0

In this example, the HTTP request size was somewhere around 17000, which is more than the default maximum.

WireShark

Locate the frame that submits the HTTP Get statement
View the tab at the bottom of the WireShark screen titled “Reassembled TCP” and the number beside this will be the size of the reassembled HTTP request.

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Note This is a "FAST PUBLISH" article created directly from within the Microsoft support organization. The information contained herein is provided as-is in response to emerging issues. As a result of the speed in making it available, the materials may include typographical errors and may be revised at any time without notice. See Terms of Use

(http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=151500)

for other considerations.

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