tech@,

RFC 9110 defines HEAD as GET without response content; RFC 9112 Section
6.3 makes the HTTP/1.1 framing rule explicit: any response to a HEAD
request is terminated by the empty line after the header section,
regardless of Content-Length or Transfer-Encoding.

Follow that semantic in relayd instead of switching the response to an
unbounded body and adding Connection: close.

This avoids forwarding both Connection: keep-alive from the backend and
relayd's added Connection: close.

Ok?

Index: usr.sbin/relayd/relay_http.c
===================================================================
RCS file: /home/cvs/src/usr.sbin/relayd/relay_http.c,v
diff -u -p -r1.96 relay_http.c
--- usr.sbin/relayd/relay_http.c	2 Apr 2026 13:35:36 -0000	1.96
+++ usr.sbin/relayd/relay_http.c	7 May 2026 01:05:52 -0000
@@ -196,6 +196,7 @@ relay_read_http(struct bufferevent *bev,
 	struct kv		*upgrade = NULL, *upgrade_ws = NULL;
 	struct kv		*connection_close = NULL;
 	int			 ws_response = 0;
+	int			 head_response = 0;
 	enum httpmethod		 request_method = HTTP_METHOD_NONE;
 
 	getmonotime(&con->se_tv_last);
@@ -480,6 +481,10 @@ relay_read_http(struct bufferevent *bev,
 
 		connection_close = kv_find_value(&desc->http_headers,
 		    "Connection", "close", ",");
+		head_response = cre->dir == RELAY_DIR_RESPONSE &&
+		    request_method == HTTP_METHOD_HEAD;
+		if (head_response)
+			cre->toread = 0;
 
 		switch (desc->http_method) {
 		case HTTP_METHOD_CONNECT:
@@ -539,7 +544,7 @@ relay_read_http(struct bufferevent *bev,
 			bev->readcb = relay_read_http;
 			break;
 		}
-		if (desc->http_chunked) {
+		if (desc->http_chunked && !head_response) {
 			/* Chunked transfer encoding */
 			cre->toread = TOREAD_HTTP_CHUNK_LENGTH;
 			bev->readcb = relay_read_httpchunks;



-- 
wbr, Kirill