Apache force DNS lookups

Question

I've got an Apache that's proxying requests to an external entity:

    ProxyPass /something  https://external.example.com/somethingelse

This external site likes to switch the values of that domain based on where they want their traffic. Apache seemingly doesn't pick up the new value until it's restarted. Is there a way to force Apache to do new lookups based on certain amount of time? After some research and even looking at the code, I don't see an obvious answer. If that isn't an option, any other suggestions?

Answer 1

According to Apache documentation :

DNS resolution for origin domains DNS resolution happens when the socket to the origin domain is created for the first time. When connection reuse is enabled, each backend domain is resolved only once per child process, and cached for all further connections until the child is recycled.

There is ProxyPass key=value parameter to control this:

disablereuse Off This parameter should be used when you want to force mod_proxy to immediately close a connection to the backend after being used, and thus, disable its persistent connection and pool for that backend. This helps in various situations where a firewall between Apache httpd and the backend server (regardless of protocol) tends to silently drop connections or when backends themselves may be under round- robin DNS. When connection reuse is enabled each backend domain is resolved (with a DNS query) only once per child process and cached for all further connections until the child is recycled. To disable connection reuse, set this property value to On.