The mailing list for listmasters using Sympa

[Gavin Younger <address@concealed>]

Hi,

We've recently upgraded our Sympa server to v 6.2.54  - since 6.2.35, wwsympa 
is configured through mod_proxy_fcgi. (see below)

### Apache httpd 2.4 configuration for Sympa
##
## Note: As of 6.2.35-0.1.b.1, mod_proxy_fcgi was adopted instead of 
mod_fcgid.
## * You have to edit /etc/sysconfig/sympa as described in it.

We are having an intermittant issue with 5xx errors on the list server - 
problem seems to be request timeouts on long running requests - more 
specifically the ones that have expensive database operations associated with 
them (get me a list of all lists, or, searching for lists  -- we have 
THOUSANDS of lists on ourserver) - what sympa have done is change the way 
that they run the fastcgi daemons that service the web requests - they now 
run mod_proxy_fastcgi in Apache (instead of mod_fcgid) - I can control the 
number of processes that get spawned - but would like to be able to set a 
suitably high enough timeout value - which I can't seem to be able to find an 
option for :
 
I'm seeing stuff like : 
 
Tue Aug 04 14:42:58.182374 2020] [proxy_fcgi:error] [pid 1176] (70007)The 
timeout specified has expired: [client 10.4.161.13:44688] AH01075: Error 
dispatching request to :, referer: https://lists.ncl.ac.uk/wws
[Tue Aug 04 14:43:04.913305 2020] [proxy_fcgi:error] [pid 1177] (70007)The 
timeout specified has expired: [client 10.4.161.12:37339] AH01075: Error 
dispatching request to :, referer: https://lists.ncl.ac.uk/wws
[Tue Aug 04 14:47:18.323317 2020] [proxy_fcgi:error] [pid 1179] (70007)The 
timeout specified has expired: [client 10.4.161.13:64337] AH01075: Error 
dispatching request to :, referer: 
https://lists.ncl.ac.uk/wws/search_list_request
 
in the server error logs. 

In httpd.conf this is now configured as : 


<Location /wws>
   SetHandler "proxy:unix:/var/run/wwsympa.socket|fcgi://"      <---- Where 
can I set a timeout? Can I?
   #Require all granted
</Location>

<Location /static-sympa>
   Require all granted
</Location>
Alias /static-sympa /home/sympa/static_content  

(Server version: Apache/2.4.6 (CentOS) , sympa/6.2.54, CentOS7) 

Any help/hints would be greatly appreciated. 

Kind Regards,

Gavin Younger, 
Infrastructure Systems, IT Service,
Newcastle University