[lug] Load Balancing Question

[Dan Ferris]

So,

I have been helping a friend with 2 new mail/web servers.  The 2 servers
are DNS round robin load balanced because that was the fastest, easiest,
and cheapest way to get the load balancing that we want.

So my question is this...

The site has a proxy server running Squid.  It's not running in
transparent mode, so all the workstations need to have the proxy server
set up manually (it sucks, but I didn't do it and it can't be undone
without MAJOR hassel) or web browsing won't work. 

Now, the load balancing works fine from the outside world.  It's
completely transparent to any outside user. 

However...

If we log into Squirrelmail on a machine that uses the Squid proxy
server, it will come up with the folder list just fine, but the inbox
message view will say something like invalid login.  This problem is
because the proxy requests part of the web page from one server and part
of the web page from the other server.

I don't have enough time to research this since I have to actually
finish Christmas shopping, so I'm enlisting the help of fellow geeks
that may have delt with these issues before.  Right now the fix is a
bandaid in that the DNS load balancing has been turned off for computers
inside the network.

I would appreciate any suggestions.  We can't spend any money to get a
real load balancer and I'm not highly keep on dealing with LVS (at least
not right now).

Dan Ferris