Server response gets cut off half way through

Question

I have a REST API that returns json responses. Sometimes (and what seems to be at completely random), the json response gets cut off half-way through. So the returned json string looks like:

...route_short_name":"135","route_long_name":"Secte // end of response

I'm pretty sure it's not an encoding issue because the cut off point keeps changing position, depending on the json string that's returned. I haven't found a particular response size either for which the cut off happens (I've seen 65kb not get cut off, whereas 40kbs would).

Looking at the response header when the cut off does happen:

{
    "Cache-Control" = "must-revalidate, private, max-age=0";
    Connection = "keep-alive";
    "Content-Type" = "application/json; charset=utf-8";
    Date = "Fri, 11 May 2012 19:58:36 GMT";
    Etag = "\"f36e55529c131f9c043b01e965e5f291\"";
    Server = "nginx/1.0.14";
    "Transfer-Encoding" = Identity;
    "X-Rack-Cache" = miss;
    "X-Runtime" = "0.739158";
    "X-UA-Compatible" = "IE=Edge,chrome=1";
}

Doesn't ring a bell either. Anyone?

Answer 1

We had a similar problem. It was caused by our REST server (DropWizard) having SO_LINGER enabled. Under load DropWizard was disconnecting NGINX before it had a chance to flush it's buffers. The JSON was >8kb and the front end would receive it truncated.