Last Modified: Jun 28, 2025
Affected Product(s):
BIG-IP TMOS
Known Affected Versions:
15.1.10, 15.1.10.2, 15.1.10.3, 15.1.10.4, 15.1.10.5, 15.1.10.6, 16.1.5, 16.1.5.1, 16.1.5.2, 16.1.6, 17.1.0, 17.1.0.1, 17.1.0.2, 17.1.0.3, 17.1.1, 17.1.1.1, 17.1.1.2, 17.1.1.3, 17.1.1.4, 17.1.2, 17.1.2.1, 17.1.2.2
Opened: Nov 09, 2023 Severity: 2-Critical Related Article:
K000137554
The systemd service unit for httpd shows a status of inactive (dead) after you restart httpd using bigstart restart httpd. For example: # systemctl status httpd * httpd.service - LSB: start and stop Apache HTTP Server Loaded: loaded (/etc/rc.d/init.d/httpd; enabled; vendor preset: enabled) Active: inactive (dead) since Mon 2023-11-13 09:55:06 GMT; 5s ago In versions v15.1.10.5 and above in v15.1.x, v16.1.5 and above in v16.1.x, and v17.1.1.4 and above, if a system is affected by this and then a user or process restarts httpd via systemd, the GUI will stop responding and return 403 Forbidden errors. This happens when attempting to renew or update the device certificate via the GUI.
httpd is running normally, but systemd is not aware of it.
Executing the command bigstart restart httpd. This will also happen behind-the-scenes when making HTTP configuration changes via tmsh/the GUI/iControl.
To confirm httpd is running, you can use the following commands: bigstart status httpd OR ps ax | grep '[h]ttpd' If you would like to clear the stale state, restart httpd via its systemd service unit twice: systemctl restart httpd && systemctl restart httpd If the GUI is returning 403 Forbidden errors for everything, restart httpd ("systemctl restart httpd && systemctl restart httpd").
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