Occasional 502 bad gateway from Apache HTTP proxy
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Problem
Users will occasionally receive an error page reporting a "Bad gateway" condition. This means the proxy couldn't get a response from the application server.
Cause
This can result from a known issue in Apache, which affected versions 2.0.63 through 2.2.3 and was marked as resolved with 2.2.4. Apache wasn't checking for one of the possible conditions for its connections to the application server, so it would periodically (e.g., once in tens of thousands of requests) use a connection handle that had been reset by the application server.
Resolution
Upgrade to the latest version of Apache httpd.
If you're using a web server compiled from source and have a strong reason not to upgrade, you also have the option of making a tiny edit to the source as described in one of the comments and recompiling.
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