Hi Robert Thanks for answering.
If I restart the web server and use the HEAD command as the very first request, I get: %> HEAD http://iahc-linux13.iah.bbsrc.ac.uk/Gallus_gallus/mapview?chr=1 500 Internal Server Error Connection: close Date: Wed, 18 Apr 2007 08:56:57 GMT Server: Apache Content-Type: text/plain Client-Date: Wed, 18 Apr 2007 08:56:58 GMT Client-Response-Num: 1 (however the same address displays in IE without HTML headers and with special characters). My log file shows: [Wed Apr 18 09:56:55 2007] [notice] Apache/2.2.4 (Unix) mod_perl/2.0.3 Perl/v5.8.0 configured -- resuming normal operations [Wed Apr 18 09:56:57 2007] [error] [client 149.155.40.20] malformed header from script. Bad header=<head>: mapview [Wed Apr 18 09:56:57 2007] [warn] /perl/Gallus_gallus/mapview did not send an HTTP header [Wed Apr 18 09:57:45 2007] [error] [client 149.155.42.148] malformed header from script. Bad header=<head>: mapview [Wed Apr 18 09:57:45 2007] [warn] /perl/Gallus_gallus/mapview did not send an HTTP header I must confess, I don't really know what the Apache::Registry and ModPerl::Registry modules actually do, but the code in question is handled by ModPerl::Registry. From httpd.conf (mostly a perl script!): $Location{"/perl"}={ SetHandler => 'perl-script', PerlHandler => 'ModPerl::Registry', # Options => '+ExecCGI', allow => 'from all', # PerlSendHeader => 'On', PerlOptions => '+ParseHeaders', }; Now, in terms of grepping "Content-type", or indeed "content_type" (to check for calls to apache modules to set the header) there isn't really anything obvious... A bunch of test scripts, some user web pages etc, but nothing that seems to specifically print out these headers... Thanks Mick -----Original Message----- From: Robert Landrum [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: 16 April 2007 17:45 To: michael watson (IAH-C) Cc: modperl@perl.apache.org Subject: Re: Malformed header from script michael watson (IAH-C) wrote: > Sorry for the confusion.... > > The code also actually attempts to print out HTML headers ie > "<HTML><HEAD> etc" but these DO NOT come through to the webpage - > instead, a bunch of special characters are printed out... Right... because the <HTML> and <HEAD> tags are being (incorrectly) shoved into the Content-type field by apache.. From the command line do: HEAD http://my.web.host.com I bet you'll see Content-Type: <HTML><HEAD> or something close to that. Apache is expecting the first two lines of your output to be a content type header. I suspect that the reason you're running into this issue is because the original code was never intended to be run as a Apache::Registry script, and that the content type printing is being controlled by a global variable. i.e. print "Content-type: foo/bar\n\n" if($HEADER_PRINTED == 0); $HEADER_PRINTED = 1; That global variable is never being reset to 0, and thus all requests (except the very first) end up being sent across without a header. I could be wrong, but I would start grepping for 'Content-type' in the code. Rob
