504436 - Redirection of domains somehow "remembered" by Firefox, prevents access to website

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(Firefox :: General, defect)

Description

[Nick]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1) Gecko/20090624 Firefox/3.5 (.NET CLR 3.5.30729)
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1) Gecko/20090624 Firefox/3.5 (.NET CLR 3.5.30729)

I accidentally connected to my school's residential wireless network, which uses a webpage login method. So typing in any URL redirects me to this page, on the "netreg.service.emory.edu" server (which isn't available externally, so don't try). I had tried to access "dailykos.com", and was brought to this page. Then when I corrected my wireless connection to my own, whenever I try to access this website now, it attempts to access "netreg.service.emory.edu", no matter how I try to access it, preventing me from getting to the page.

Reproducible: Didn't try

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Attempt to access a network using a webpage that intercepts all requests and redirects you there until you login
2. Reconnect to an unrestricted network
3. Attempt to access the page
Actual Results:  
Firefox attempts to access "netreg.service.emory.edu" instead of "dailykos.com"

Expected Results:  
Firefox should access "dailykos.com"

I exited Firefox and tried again in safe mode, no effect. I can access the site normally from Internet Explorer.

Comment 1

[Nick]

Just reproduced it for whitehouse.gov, but it separately affects Internet Explorer... that is, if the redirection happens in Firefox, I can access the site fine from Internet Explorer, and vice versa. However, closing and restarting IE corrects the problem, but it doesn't seem to help Firefox.

Comment 2

[Matthias Versen [:Matti]]

>1. Attempt to access a network using a webpage that intercepts all requests and
>redirects you there until you login

How is this done, with a http redirect (301,302, 307) or with injected html page that redirects with JS or DNS redirect ?
This doesn't mean that this is a bug, caching a http redirect is permitted and usefull.
clearing the disk cache may help if a http 301 redirect is used for example.

Comment 3

[Tyler Downer [He/Him]]

Reporter, are you still seeing this issue with Firefox 3.6.12 or later in safe mode? If not, please close. These links can help you in your testing.
http://support.mozilla.com/kb/Safe+Mode
http://support.mozilla.com/kb/Managing+profiles
Also, please consider using the most recent Firefox 4 beta build, your bug may be resolved there.

Comment 4

[Tyler Downer [He/Him]]

No reply, INCOMPLETE. Please retest with Firefox 3.6.13 or later and a new profile (http://support.mozilla.com/kb/Managing+profiles). If you continue to see this issue with the newest firefox and a new profile, then please comment on this bug.

Comment 5

[Leon Sha]

This bug still happened on firefox 10.
I repreduce the bug with these steps.
1. Set web proxy to www.dontexist.com:80
2. Visit mlb.com I got http://free.domain.name/?domain=mlb.com
3. Disable proxy and visit mlb.com, it didn't come back.
I tried the safe mode and new profile the bug can still be reproduced.
Of course if I clear the cache, I can visit the site again. But cache is realy useful and I don't want to clear it everytime.

Comment 6

[Matthias Versen [:Matti]]

GET http://mlb.com/ HTTP/1.1
Host: mlb.com
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; rv:10.0.2) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/10.0.2
Accept: text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8
Accept-Language: de-at,en-us;q=0.7,en;q=0.3
Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate
Proxy-Connection: keep-alive

HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently
Date: Sun, 26 Feb 2012 15:31:12 GMT
Server: Apache
Location: http://free.domain.name/?domain=mlb.com
Content-Length: 247
Content-Type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1

That is of course remembered and it's no bug that this redirect is cached.
It's a 301 and there are no "no cache" headers in the response

Comment 7

[solver]

Hi,

I am also experiencing the same problem. The explaination given by Matti is right but it still is not a resolution. 

What it means is if the website has index page with under construction message only with no "no cache" in header - once visited you will always get same message for whole your life ( unless you clean browser history ). Well I think that is wrong OR atleast you should come up with some criteria that header cache information will be hold for X amount of times only or refreshed after X time without user interference needed.

Thanks