175368 - Mozilla cannot view text/html pages with a non-standard extension when "plugger" installed

Status: VERIFIED FIXED

(Core Graveyard :: Plug-ins, defect)

Description

[David Johnson]

I am using Mozilla 1.2b on Linux with the latest version of the "plugger" plugin.

If I have plugger installed, I am unable to view text/html pages which have a
binary extension. E.g. .dat or .rpm.

When I attempt to view a page with such an extension, the browser calls plugger
to handle it, which of course it can't, and produces:

Plugger: No appropriate application for type text/html found!

This didn't happen with previous releases of mozilla.
For an example, view the following URL with plugger installed:

http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/webadmin/webmin-1.020-1.noarch.rpm?download

Comment 1

[Matthias Versen [:Matti]]

the page sends the CORRECT mime-type (text/html: tested with wget, lynx,
mozilla.org websniffer and it works in NS4.7x)

confirming with win2k build 20021017..
we suck because we should handle the mime-type correctly !

Comment 2

[Matthias Versen [:Matti]]

Attachment: my installed plugins

Comment 3

[Matthias Versen [:Matti]]

Attachment: http log

Comment 4

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

To clarify what's going on:

The patch for bug 163568 is biting us here.  We're ignoring a type we can handle
internally and that's correctly set by the server, inferring a completely bogus
type based on an extension that is commonly associated with two completely
different types, and trying to launch a plugin (plugger or realplayer) on HTML
content.  Worse yet, we are not even resetting the content-type on the channel
to the type that corresponds to the extension!  So we either get the wrong
plugin or no plugin at all or best case feed completely bogus data to a plugin.

I would suggest that bug 163568 be backed out until it can be fixed in a way
that does not seriously regress normal web-browsing... (eg, having the
realplayer plugin installed should _not_ keep me from downloading RedHat Package
Manager packages that have the right type sent by the server!).

Comment 5

[Andrew Schultz]

*** Bug 175622 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 6

[serge (gone)]

patch for bug 163568 has been backed out by check in for bug 169991 on
2002-10-20 21:08, so this regression should be gone, please confirm.

Comment 7

[Mike Kaply [:mkaply]]

*** Bug 175688 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 8

[Dan Tobias]

It sounds like the Mozilla developers have snuck in a form of MIME-type
second-guessing, a la MSIE, something that is very much against the standards
and can have nasty consequences.  In this case, the presence of anything at the
end of a URL that looks like the file extension of a plugin data type triggers
the plugin whether appropriate or not.  One of the sillier results is the
inability to read newsgroup posts from Australia, because the ".au" TLD
resembles the file extension of a type of audio file.  One can wonder / fear
that a future version might attempt to execute anything from a .com domain under
MS-DOS, since .com is an extension for DOS executables.

I've got a test script in my site that detects some of this sort of MIME
second-guessing (it trips up MSIE sometimes); the output of the following URLs
is always of type text/plain, and a standards-compliant browser should show it
that way:

http://webtips.dan.info/cgi-bin/plaintext.pl
http://webtips.dan.info/cgi-bin/plaintext.pl/test.html
http://webtips.dan.info/cgi-bin/plaintext.pl/test.gif
http://webtips.dan.info/cgi-bin/plaintext.pl/test.au
http://webtips.dan.info/cgi-bin/plaintext.pl/test.swf
http://webtips.dan.info/cgi-bin/plaintext.pl/test.exe

Comment 9

[Graham]

The backout from comment #6 has cured bug 175688, see comment #7.

Comment 10

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

This is fixed.  Dan, way to lump "mozilla developers" together, dude.

Comment 11

[Dan Tobias]

OK, I should have been more careful and said "*some* Mozilla developer" rather
than "Mozilla developers".  My outrage at seeing such an abomination before the
Lord as MIME-type second-guessing turn up in Mozilla blinded me, I guess.

Comment 12

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

*** Bug 179425 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 13

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

*** Bug 181594 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 14

[bmartin]

Marking this Verified Fixed

Build ID 20030515