391193 - Refuses to contact the server upon hitting an error or certain responses - have to restart browser to flush

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Firefox :: General, defect)

Description

[Nicholas Orr]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-GB; rv:1.8.1.5; .NET CLR 2.0.50727) Gecko/20070713 Firefox/2.0.0.5
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-GB; rv:1.8.1.5; .NET CLR 2.0.50727) Gecko/20070713 Firefox/2.0.0.5

When ever I've hit a problem, like 403, 503, not found due to unresolved domain.
The browser refuses to actually try again due to caching...

Example today, I was having an issue configuring a web server and FF had got a application/octet-stream response. Due to FF's cache it will not actually "Go and Check" the server and just does whatever is in the cache at the point in time. Opening FF on another computer (mstsc ftw) revealed that if FF had bothered to actually try again it would have got a 200 response and page full of html...

This is really annoying for DNS issues as well, the cache thinks it knows best - no amount of forced refreshing (ctrl+F5) will let the browser actually "Go and Check" for a fresh response. Clearing the local caches and actually nslookuping up doesn't resolve it either. I connect to OpenDNS's dns servers so you can actually ensure you are getting the correct result.

The only way to fix these problems is to close & re-open the browser. Not really an issue if the only tab you have open is that single one giving you issues. I never usually have just one tab open though... Restoring existing session just carries the problem over  so you do have to make sure every tab is closed before you exit so you can start up on a clean slate.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Configure LiteSpeed wrong
2. Access the site from FF
3. Get a response, (still broken)
4. Re-configure LiteSpeed
5. Retry the page in FF
6. Get a cached response
7. Open FF on another Computer
8. Get "fresh" response, working 
9. Back to cached FF
10. Still serving cached response even though if FF bothered to actually check the server it would have got a different response.
Actual Results:  
FF refuses to "check" the server for a different response

Comment 1

[Tyler Downer [He/Him]]

This bug was reported on Firefox 2.x or older, which is no longer supported and will not be receiving any more updates. I strongly suggest that you update to Firefox 3.6.3 or later, update your plugins (flash, adobe, etc.), and retest in a new profile. If you still see the issue with the updated Firefox, please post here. Otherwise, please close as RESOLVED > WORKSFORME
http://www.mozilla.com
http://support.mozilla.com/kb/Managing+profiles
http://support.mozilla.com/kb/Safe+mode

Comment 2

[Nicholas Orr]

I can't duplicate this at the moment.

Will keep an eye out for it in the future ;)

It only happens when the web server is configured wrong.
If I send different HTTP response codes or content types it works properly.

Nick