Cloudfront cache-control headers missing

Question

I setup Cloudfront to serve static images, js, css files for www.lottoresults.ie. I used a custom origin server.

The cloudfront domain name I setup is icdn.lottoresults.ie. I set this up using Bind9 dns, with icdn.lottoresults.ie a CNAME for the cloudfront distro.

That's all fine.

However, for website performance optimization (Yslow, google pagespeed etc), I want to have Cache-control and Expires headers set, and I do not want Etags.

To do this, I have the following in my htaccess file for the doc_root of www.lottoresults.ie:

Header unset Pragma
FileETag none
Header unset ETag

<FilesMatch "(.*)\.(ico|jpg|jpeg|png|gif|js|css|swf)$">
ExpiresActive on
ExpiresDefault "access plus 1 year"
Header set Cache-Control "max-age=1864000, public"
Header unset Last-Modified
</FilesMatch>

The problem is that for assets coming from the cloudfront distro (icdn), I have no Cache-control or Expires headers, but I do have Etags - yet for www I do have Cache-control and Expires headers, and no Etags.

When I query an asset from my cloudfront domain, I have no Cache-control or Expires headers, but I do have Etags.

curl -I -L http://icdn.lottoresults.ie/images/green-header.jpg

HTTP/1.0 200 OK
Date: Sun, 01 Apr 2012 22:58:30 GMT
Server: Apache/2.2.9 (Debian) PHP/5.2.6-1+lenny13 with Suhosin-Patch
Last-Modified: Mon, 08 Aug 2011 20:23:00 GMT
**ETag**: "28a213-19b-4aa0436a1b100"
Accept-Ranges: bytes
Content-Length: 411
Content-Type: image/jpeg
Age: 22137
X-Cache: Hit from cloudfront
X-Amz-Cf-Id: AV55dR4_vWHtlTbU6E9M2tkh9reoAwZcHlD4y9csetK6B6Ey8gDPJA=
Via: 1.0 8adf6ec3585d73c680b4a6d5052988d8.cloudfront.net (CloudFront)
Connection: close

Yet when I query the same asset from my origin server, I get the following, which includes Cache-control, Expires, and no Etags.

curl -I -L http://www.lottoresults.ie/images/green-header.jpg

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Fri, 06 Apr 2012 20:50:08 GMT
Server: Apache/2.2.9 (Debian) PHP/5.2.6-1+lenny13 with Suhosin-Patch
Accept-Ranges: bytes
Content-Length: 411
**Cache-Control**: max-age=1864000, public
**Expires**: Sat, 06 Apr 2013 20:50:08 GMT
Content-Type: image/jpeg

Any help or advice greatly appreciated.

Thanks Paul

Answer 1

I think I know what this was, for anyone else who might have same issue.

It is kind of PEBKAC - I have to invalidate the assets before they acquire new headers.

E.g. I added a new file, images/zoom2.gif, and it looks correct:

curl -I -L http://icdn.lottoresults.ie/images/zoom2.gif

HTTP/1.0 200 OK
Date: Fri, 06 Apr 2012 23:00:24 GMT
Server: Apache/2.2.9 (Debian) PHP/5.2.6-1+lenny13 with Suhosin-Patch
Accept-Ranges: bytes
Content-Length: 1849
Cache-Control: max-age=1864000, public
Expires: Sat, 06 Apr 2013 23:00:24 GMT
Content-Type: image/gif
Age: 29
X-Cache: Hit from cloudfront
X-Amz-Cf-Id:         vPPBdJpw0ZI_J2trHyECnE2UBeQO9NsQZD9GSvl3GIVAZuQN5lz1ZQ==,J4bBHfF5lKEpjRPLZVYpS9HUdAKEOLEe-Gy3-a_x4PsLPrdWuRg93Q==
Via: 1.0 00204466f749ba432b50dc49d604c534.cloudfront.net (CloudFront)
Connection: close