How to Ignore OPTIONS HTTP/1.0 200 (internal dummy connection)

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A very common issue with Apache logs in which many multiples of the following lines are logged:

OPTIONS * HTTP/1.0″ 200 – “-” “Apache/2.2.3 (CentOS) (internal dummy connection)

You’re logs will looking something like this (in this case ipv6 enabled):

::1 – – [30/Jan/2011:09:29:17 -0800] “OPTIONS * HTTP/1.0” 200 – “-” “Apache/2.2.3 (CentOS) (internal dummy connection)”
::1 – – [30/Jan/2011:09:29:40 -0800] “OPTIONS * HTTP/1.0” 200 – “-” “Apache/2.2.3 (CentOS) (internal dummy connection)”
::1 – – [30/Jan/2011:09:29:41 -0800] “OPTIONS * HTTP/1.0” 200 – “-” “Apache/2.2.3 (CentOS) (internal dummy connection)”
::1 – – [30/Jan/2011:09:29:42 -0800] “OPTIONS * HTTP/1.0” 200 – “-” “Apache/2.2.3 (CentOS) (internal dummy connection)”
::1 – – [30/Jan/2011:09:29:46 -0800] “OPTIONS * HTTP/1.0” 200 – “-” “Apache/2.2.3 (CentOS) (internal dummy connection)”
::1 – – [30/Jan/2011:09:32:27 -0800] “OPTIONS * HTTP/1.0” 200 – “-” “Apache/2.2.3 (CentOS) (internal dummy connection)”

The definitive explanation for this issue can be found at the link below, however, it does not detail the method to follow for servers setup for ipv6 (which is what my post documents):

What you can do is simply ignore the errors by adding a few lines to your apache conf files:

# Custom Conditional Logs
# Reference: http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/logs.html Conditional Logs
#
# Mark requests from the loop-back interface (internal dummy connection)
SetEnvIf Remote_Addr “::1” dontlog
SetEnvIf User-Agent “.*internal dummy connection.*” dontlog

You’ll then add dontlog to the end of logfile directive (which may look something like this):

#
# For a single logfile with access, agent, and referer information
# (Combined Logfile Format), use the following directive:
#
CustomLog logs/access_log combined env=!dontlog

Basically, you’ll just need to ignore these internal requests by blocking the local Remote Address. You can reference Conditional Logs at:

That should help.

This will also help:

Post written by Ed Reckers

Founder and lead web development consultant at Red Bridge Internet : San Francisco WordPress Developers and Consultants.

2 Responses to “How to Ignore OPTIONS HTTP/1.0 200 (internal dummy connection)”

  1. mike

    Thanks for the tips !

  2. chris

    Hi,
    I just defined an unused port (in port.conf):
    Listen 192.168.1.11:8888

    and together with the following snippet (in conf.d/other-vhosts-access-log)

    CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/other_vhosts_access.log vhost_combined

    ALL log entries like “OPTIONS* HTTP/1.0 200 (internal dummy connection)” do end up in this logfile defined above. It is working fine and I don´t need any single conditional log statement.

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