How does the url_response probe work?
Article ID: 218564
Updated On:
Products
Issue/Introduction
Need to understand how the url_response probe works especially in cases where direct access to the url works fine but the request from the url_response probe fails with an error.
Environment
- url_response probe 4.47 or higher
Cause
- various such as network, SSL, target application security, source system, etc.
Resolution
url_response probe use the cURL libraries for the URL check.
https://curl.haxx.se/libcurl/c/libcurl-errors.html
https://curl.haxx.se/libcurl/c/libcurl.html
You can check whether the request works from a browser installed on the actual robot to rule out any network issue.
If it's Linux or you have curl for Windows available, try running the curl command directly from the robot where you have url_response installed,
curl -i --verbose https://<url>
Do some of those requests being made to specific urls, need to go through a proxy?
What version of url_response is being used? Make sure you are using the latest version, e.g., as of the creation date of this article-> url_response 4.47 GA.
When you hit the url directly does it redirect the request?
If curl cannot connect to the URL, neither can url_response since that is the underlying method.
If so, security settings for the target application may be causing the redirected url to fail.
You may want to try setting the configuration option-> Retries before failure:
Specifies the number of attempts to access the URL before reporting it as a failure. These retries are executed within a single check interval.
For example, if the Check interval is set to 300 seconds and Retries before failure is set to 3, then, the probe executes all the 3 retries in 300 seconds and generates an alarm, on failure.
You may also want to try setting the User Agent in the url_response configuration as well.
User Agent: specifies the user agent string that identifies your browser and provides certain system details to servers hosting the web sites to visit. If you do not provide any value, the hard-coded string NimBUS/2.0 is used, simulating that the client is a Nimsoft client.
To learn more about User Agent strings, please refer to-> http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms537503.aspx
Troubleshooting
1. Set the url_response loglevel to 5, and logsize to 100000.
2. Cold start the probe (Deactivate-Activate)
3. Open a support case and attach the url_response logs showing any errors within the time frame of the check interval.
Can you successfully run the curl command to hit the url from a different system?
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