Problems accelerator NOT serving from cache if accel_host is down

Hello,
I'm trying to setup a squid 2.1REL in accelerator mode.
I want this squid to
keep objects for min 5 minutes
keep objects for max 3 days
serve stale objects if the server is down; even if no-cache is set in
the request.

But squid keeps returning TCP_REFRESH_MISS/503 if accel_host can't be
reached!

Excerpt from my conf:
debug_options ALL,1 22,3 33,5
redirect_rewrites_host_header off
# two lines for readability
refresh_pattern ^http://starweb\.example\.com/ 5 1% 4320
        override-expire override-lastmod reload-into-ims
refresh_pattern . 0 20% 4320
httpd_accel_host starweb.example.com
httpd_accel_port 80
reload_into_ims on

Excerpt from debug output:
clientInterpretRequestHeaders: REQ_NOCACHE = NOT SET
clientInterpretRequestHeaders: REQ_CACHABLE = SET
clientInterpretRequestHeaders: REQ_HIERARCHICAL = SET
clientProcessRequest: GET 'http://starweb.example.com/'
clientProcessRequest2: default HIT
clientProcessRequest: TCP_HIT for 'http://starweb.example.com/'
clientCacheHit: http://starweb.example.com/, 4008 bytes
refreshCheck(HTTP): 'http://starweb.example.com/'
refreshCheck: Matched '^http://starweb\.example\.com/ 300 1% 259200'
refreshCheck: age = 21262
    check_time: Tue, 24 Nov 1998 18:53:53 GMT
    entry->timestamp: Tue, 24 Nov 1998 12:59:31 GMT
refreshCheck: YES: reload-into-ims
clientCacheHit: in refreshCheck() block
clientProcessExpired: 'http://starweb.example.com/'
clientProcessExpired: lastmod 907053518
clientHandleIMSReply: http://starweb.example.com/, 934 bytes
clientGetsOldEntry: NO, reply=503

another variant:
refreshCheck: age = 6863
check_time: Tue, 24 Nov 1998 13:08:59 GMT
entry->timestamp: Tue, 24 Nov 1998 11:14:36 GMT
refreshCheck: factor = 0.013255
refreshCheck: YES: factor >= pct
clientCacheHit: in refreshCheck() block
clientProcessExpired: 'http://starweb.example.com/office/body.html'
clientProcessExpired: lastmod 911388324
clientHandleIMSReply: http://starweb.example.com/office/body.html, 966
bytes
clientGetsOldEntry: NO, reply=503

Thanks for any help
Stefan (st@stardivision.de)
Received on Tue Nov 24 1998 - 13:42:26 MST