Bug ID 660868: Resets after adding URL Branching item

Last Modified: Jul 12, 2023

Affected Product(s):
BIG-IP APM(all modules)

Known Affected Versions:
13.0.0, 13.0.0 HF1, 13.0.0 HF2, 13.0.0 HF3

Fixed In:
13.1.0, 13.0.1

Opened: Apr 26, 2017

Severity: 3-Major

Symptoms

Clients receiving resets, and these error logs in /var/log/apm: Apr 25 14:23:12 ip-10-1-1-4 err tmm[12329]: 01870029:3: /Common/Allow_Access:Common:780e1b9f: [C] 10.1.10.9:57991 -> 10.1.10.102:443:ERR_NOT_FOUND: failed to find next policy item

Impact

The invalid expression causes a non-recoverable failure in the control plane of TMM. Changing the expression has no effect.

Conditions

A URL Branching item was added to the per-request policy. The item template for URL Branching contains single-quotes in the expression, which are considered invalid by the TCL interpreter.

Workaround

Because of the non-recoverable failure caused by the invalid expression, there are only two workarounds: 1) Do not use the URL Branching template. Equivalent functionality is achieved by adding an empty item and using the expression builder. The templates in the expression builder are correct. 2) If a URL Branching template was already used, fix the expression by replacing all single-quotes with double-quotes. Then `bigstart restart tmm` to reset the affected part of the control plane.

Fix Information

Now the URL Branching item in an APM Per-Request policy can successfully operate using templates.

Behavior Change

Guides & references

K10134038: F5 Bug Tracker Filter Names and Tips