nginx proxy_pass of PUT with no Content-Length header returns 411

Question

I am having trouble with nginx proxy_pass and PUT without a Content-Length header returning a 411 error.

What I run to test this:

# curl -XPUT http://localhost:8080/
<html>
<head><title>411 Length Required</title></head>
<body bgcolor="white">
<center><h1>411 Length Required</h1></center>
<hr><center>nginx/1.1.19</center>
</body>
</html>
# touch temp
# curl -X PUT http://localhost:8080/ -T temp
{"response": "ok"}

Relevant configuration:

# Proxy to Backend Server
server {
    listen localhost:8080;

    location / {
        proxy_set_header Host $http_host;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Host $http_host;
        proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
        proxy_pass http://backend_server;
    }
}

I found this post which seems to be the same problem:

http://forum.nginx.org/read.php?2,72279,72279#msg-72279

Is there a way to get nginx to proxy PUT requests WITHOUT a Content-Length header?

Does a newer version of nginx NOT suffer from this bug/limitation?

Duplicate http://serverfault.com/questions/164220/is-there-a-way-to-avoid-nginx-411-content-length-required-errors — Danack, Mar 21 '13 at 00:18
Note that PUT with no body works from curl. Not sure if that is curl adding the zero header or nginx assuming that no header means 0 length. — Nick Palmer, Mar 21 '13 at 00:54
"Nginx assuming that no header means zero length" That is what the HTTP spec says http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec4.html "The presence of a message-body in a request is signaled by the inclusion of a Content-Length or Transfer-Encoding header field in the request's message-headers." No length = No body. — Danack, Mar 21 '13 at 01:28
They have fixed this in more recent versions of nginx apparently but I haven't had time to test it. — Nick Palmer, Mar 27 '13 at 22:21

score 1 · Answer 1 · edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:13

Upgrade to nginx >= 1.4.1 (1.3.9 or 1.4.0 would be enough, but have security issues thx @elhefe - see comments) or install NginxHttpChunkinModule as mentioned here. There are official packages for Debian and RedHat families.

Debian:

wheezy backports (currently 1.4.4-1)

add to /etc/apt/sources.list:
```
deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian/ wheezy-backports main
```
run and install nginx version of your choice (nginx-full, nginx-light, nginx-naxsi)
```
apt-get update
apt-get -t wheezy-backports install nginx-full
```

nginx.org package (stable version is currently 1.4.4):

wget http://nginx.org/keys/nginx_signing.key
apt-key add nginx_signing.key

add to /etc/apt/sources.list:

deb http://nginx.org/packages/debian/ wheezy nginx
deb-src http://nginx.org/packages/debian/ wheezy nginx

remove current nginx packages:

apt-get remove nginx-full nginx-common

update packages list:

apt-get update
apt-get install nginx

For Debian-like behaviour change update /etc/nginx/nginx.conf

user  www-data;

and add at the end of http section

include /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/*;

Note that you shouldn't upgrade to nginx 1.3.9 or 1.4.0: http://mailman.nginx.org/pipermail/nginx-announce/2013/000112.html — elhefe, Aug 08 '14 at 00:37

nginx proxy_pass of PUT with no Content-Length header returns 411

1 Answers1