[clug] force Apache to close connection on error

[Bob Edwards]

Hi all,

I am running a site with Nginx in front of Apache (actually in front
of lots of things, but am interested in Apache at the moment).

The FOSS version of Nginx can do rudimentary fail-over if an "upstream"
(back-end) server is not responding.

The commercial version of Nginx (Nginx Plus) can do fancier tricks like
detecting if the upstream server is responding with error code 500.

Alas, if my site is "half-dead", Apache responds with error code 500
and my FOSS version of Nginx determines that as a valid response and so
keeps on sending requests to it.

What I would like to do is get Apache to close the connection instead
of responding with error code 500. This probably breaks all kinds of
HTTP standards, but should suffice to trigger my Nginx to fail-over
to the backup server.

Any ideas?

cheers,

Bob Edwards.