236902 - URL: absolute UNC paths

Status: RESOLVED EXPIRED

(Core :: Networking: File, defect)

Description

[Damon Anderson]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.0) Opera 7.21  [en]
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.6) Gecko/20040206 Firefox/0.8

On an Intranet it is frequently desirable to reference a specific document 
directly from it's sharepoint on the Network. Opera, Netscape, I.E. all support 
the Microsoft (ugh) UNC standards of \\servername\sharename\foldername\filename 
and they can be entered directly in an <a href> tag and the internal DNS or WINS 
(ugh) server will resolve to the file directly. FireFox tries to preceed the 
absolute UNC path with the path of the current page being displayed and converts 
\ to %5C (UTF8?) which then results in a 404 error. Will FireFox be supporting 
UNC?

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1.Create an HTML page with a link as follows: <a 
href="\\servername\sharename\filename">File</a> where server, share, and file 
are actually available on your LAN.
2.Open the page in FireFox and click the link.
3.Error 404

Actual Results:  
Error 404 file not found.

Expected Results:  
Offer to either download the file or use the MIME type to determine which 
application to open the file with.

Comment 1

[Wolf [:wolf]]

<a 
href="/\\server\c\apache\apache2\conf\httpd.conf">File</a> works..

but

<a 
href="\\tazdevil\c\apache\apache2\conf\httpd.conf">File</a>
returns a 404...

it thinks it's a relative path and tries to append the current location.. 

D:\html1.htm  which was my test file.. does this.
"file:///%5C%5Ctazdevil%5Cc%5Capache%5Capache2%5Cconf%5Chttpd.conf" for the 2nd
(that works). and this
"file:///D:/%5C%5Ctazdevil%5Cc%5Capache%5Capache2%5Cconf%5Chttpd.conf" for the
1st (doesn't work) 

Tested on: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.6)
Gecko/20040206 Firefox/0.8

Comment 2

[Ali Ebrahim]

This is actually a Browser bug, not a Firefox bug since this code is inherited
from SeaMonkey.

I know this is probably an invalid bug, but I'd really love to see this feature.

--> Browser

Comment 3

[Ali Ebrahim]

This time really moving over to Browser. :)

Comment 4

[Darin Fisher]

this sounds like a duplicate of a WONTFIX bug to me.

Comment 5

[benc]

I think it is WONTFIX. I don't think anyone ever proposed that a raw UNC path
work. For one thing, wihout a valid base, you wouldn't even know if the author
meant http: or ftp:

Comment 6

[Ali Ebrahim]

(In reply to comment #5)
> I think it is WONTFIX. I don't think anyone ever proposed that a raw UNC path
> work. For one thing, wihout a valid base, you wouldn't even know if the author
> meant http: or ftp:

I think that UNC paths are accessed via the file protocol, just as if they were
local files. Therefore there is no question of either http or ftp.

UNC Path: \\foo\bar
Corresponding file path: file://///foo/bar/

Comment 7

[Andreas Otte]

(In reply to comment #6)
> 
> I think that UNC paths are accessed via the file protocol, just as if they were
> local files. Therefore there is no question of either http or ftp.
> 
> UNC Path: \\foo\bar
> Corresponding file path: file://///foo/bar/

Correct. Use the corresponding file url and all should be fine. Raw UNC paths
are no urls and have no place in a href tag. Although, sometimes such stuff
works because for unknown reasons uri-fixup kicks in on links when it shouldn't.
This is not WONTFIX but INVALID.

Comment 8

[Marcelo Bastos]

(In reply to comment #6)
> I think that UNC paths are accessed via the file protocol, just as if they were
> local files. Therefore there is no question of either http or ftp.
> 
> UNC Path: \\foo\bar
> Corresponding file path: file://///foo/bar/

The thing  is, file://///foo/bar DOESN'T WORK EITHER.

In IE,  file:///foo/bar points to  c:\foo\bar --  note, ALWAYS drive C:, not the
present drive. This works with 3 slashes; four or five slashes break it.

In Mozilla, the number of slashes makes no difference: it never works, either
pointing to drive C: or the present drive.

I tested trying to load a style sheet from c:\foo\bar.css and d:\foo\bar.css

The only way I found to make it work was making explicit the drive letter, as in:
file:///d|/foo/bar.css

Unfortunately, this  doesn't  help anybody who's trying to make a demo of a
website to be loaded directly from a CD-ROM, since the drive letter for a CD
will vary wildly.

Comment 9

[Christian :Biesinger (don't email me, ping me on IRC)]

Marcelo, this is not the bug you are looking for. this one is about UNC paths.
you want, apparently, local paths.

Comment 10

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

This is an automated message, with ID "auto-resolve01".

This bug has had no comments for a long time. Statistically, we have found that
bug reports that have not been confirmed by a second user after three months are
highly unlikely to be the source of a fix to the code.

While your input is very important to us, our resources are limited and so we
are asking for your help in focussing our efforts. If you can still reproduce
this problem in the latest version of the product (see below for how to obtain a
copy) or, for feature requests, if it's not present in the latest version and
you still believe we should implement it, please visit the URL of this bug
(given at the top of this mail) and add a comment to that effect, giving more
reproduction information if you have it.

If it is not a problem any longer, you need take no action. If this bug is not
changed in any way in the next two weeks, it will be automatically resolved.
Thank you for your help in this matter.

The latest beta releases can be obtained from:
Firefox:     http://www.mozilla.org/projects/firefox/
Thunderbird: http://www.mozilla.org/products/thunderbird/releases/1.5beta1.html
Seamonkey:   http://www.mozilla.org/projects/seamonkey/

Comment 11

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

This bug has been automatically resolved after a period of inactivity (see above
comment). If anyone thinks this is incorrect, they should feel free to reopen it.