120396 - tinderbox generates relative urls that are off by one level

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 345804

(Webtools Graveyard :: Tinderbox, defect)

Description

[Andreas Otte]

The Problem:
tinderbox generates relative urls that are off by one level

Reproduceable:
1. Go to http://tinderbox.mozilla.org/showbuilds.cgi?tree=SeaMonkey
2. Look at Page source. It contains lines like:
<a
href=../bonsai/cvsquery.cgi?module=MozillaTinderboxAll&date=explicit&mindate=1011211680&maxdate=1011214079>C</a>

This relative url is in error, there is no upper level to root.

Alternativly go to:

http://tinderbox.mozilla.org/SeaMonkey/

This will show the same page. Then again call page source. It will contain lines
like this:

<a
href=../../bonsai/cvsquery.cgi?module=MozillaTinderboxAll&date=explicit&mindate=1011208020&maxdate=1011213959>C</a>

Again this relative urls are off by one level and wrong.

The only reason we currently have no problem with this urls is that we silently
 drop to much levels of ../

The patch for bug 119071 was about to change that and that's how this problem
was detected.

Comment 1

[timeless]

you don't really need to evangelize us, you can just file a bug directly.

Comment 2

[Chris McAfee]

the server code has been hit by the 4.x browser and IE for years,
not sure I buy that this is a problem.  For url foo, what should the
new url be?  And if we are wrong, why is this working for mozilla,
4.x, and IE?

Note that tinderbox.mozilla.org does point to a root, but that there
is a sibling directory "bonsai" that is being accessed.

Comment 3

[Andreas Otte]

I always wanted to file an evangelism bug against mozilla.org ... ;-)

The reason this has not been detected before is that apparently all browsers
drop silently to much ../ in a resolution of relative urls. According to RFC
2396 it is a possible solution and mozilla is doing it too. But it is not the
only solution. RFC 2396 allows also to leave the ../ in the path or not to
execute that url at all.

tinderbox should not depend on the idea that all browser implementors go for one
of many possible solutions for this kind of wrong urls.

See bug 119071 for a related discussion.

If I have an URL http://tinderbox.mozilla.org/ than that is the root of the
access to the website. A relative url to this base url like "../bonsai/xxx"
resolves to an invalid url because there is no access allowed above "/".

Currently this url resolves to http://tinderbox.mozilla.org/bonsai/xxx (dropping
the ../ silently and getting it right by accident).

RFC 2396 would also allow to resolve this to:
http://tinderbox.mozilla.org/../bonsai/xxx (which results in a "bad request"
answer from the server)

Third solution is to throw an error and to send no request at all.

Comment 4

[timeless]

Attachment: ..

Comment 5

[Andreas Otte]

looks good to me, when this is checked in I will test the first patch from
119071 against it.

Comment 6

[Chris McAfee]

This comment in the code worries me:

# $rel_path is the relative path to webtools/tinderbox used for links.
# It changes to "../" if the page is generated statically, because then
# it is placed in tinderbox/$::tree.

I'd rather not fix something that isn't broken.
I suggest we fix this in the tbox 2.0 server and mark
this won't fix.

Comment 7

[Chris McAfee]

woops, don't mark won't fix just yet

Comment 8

[timeless]

Attachment: diff of /showbuilds.cgi?tree=MozillaTest and /MozillaTest

Note that there really are too many ../'s for registry and bonsai. compare with
addnote and showlog

Comment 9

[Andreas Otte]

Any ETA on this?

Comment 10

[Chris McAfee]

I tried this patch, it didn't quite work for me, some URL's weren't working.
I'm not especially motivated to look at this because I don't see anything
wrong.  What we have has worked since 1996, let's fix this in the
new tinderbox codebase.  Convince me to look at this, or try pulling
down webtools/{bonsai,tinderbox} and help me test this.

Comment 11

[Andreas Otte]

You don't see the problem because mozilla and other browsers are so forgiving
about the error in the generated urls. But I can live with it when it is looked
at in the new tinderbox codebase. There is no immediate rush about this. We were
able to code around it.