Apache reverse proxy: no protocol handler

I found the problem. The proxy_http module needs to be activated too in Apache (I had only proxy_html and proxy)

For me, on apache httpd 2.4, this happened because i was missing the trailing slash:

Did not work:

    <Proxy balancer://mycluster>
        BalancerMember http://192.168.111.7
        BalancerMember http://192.168.111.80
    </Proxy>
    ProxyPass / balancer://mycluster
    ProxyPassReverse / balancer://mycluster

Worked!

    <Proxy balancer://mycluster>
        BalancerMember http://192.168.111.7
        BalancerMember http://192.168.111.80
    </Proxy>
    ProxyPass / balancer://mycluster/
    ProxyPassReverse / balancer://mycluster/

(added / at the end)

For those that come looking for answers, another possibility is the URL service name to backend too is missing. With LogLevel Debug, and mod_proxy and mod_proxy_fcgi, I was seeing the following:

[debug] proxy: fgci: found worker fgci://127.0.0.1:9000/var/www/html/.../index.php [debug] mod_proxy.c(1026): Running scheme fgci handler (attempt 0) [debug] mod_proxy_fcgi.c(800): [client ...] AH01076: url: fgci://127.0.0.1:9000/var/www/html/.../index.php proxyname: (null) proxyport: 0 [debug] mod_proxy_fcgi.c(805): [client ...] AH01077: declining URL fgci://127.0.0.1:9000/var/www/html/.../index.php [warn] proxy: No protocol handler was valid for the URL /.../index.php. If you are using a DSO version of mod_proxy, make sure the proxy submodules are included in the configuration using LoadModule.

Thankfully the code for mod_proxy_fastcgi (I'm using a backport for Apache 2.2 on RHEL6) is available at https://github.com/ceph/mod-proxy-fcgi/blob/master/mod_proxy_fcgi.c#L805, which is this piece of code:

if (strncasecmp(url, "fcgi:", 5) != 0) {
    ap_log_rerror(APLOG_MARK, APLOG_DEBUG, 0, r, APLOGNO(01077) "declining URL %s", url);
    return DECLINED;
}

If you look closely at the logs -- I only noticed it when looking at the code that issues the message -- you'll see that what should be fcgi://... is misspelt as fgci://...

So when you see declining URL it means either:

• You don't have a handler loaded that accepts the service (eg. fcgi:), or
• you have misspelt the service name.