1411637 - Activity Streams pings servers every 5 minutes for highlights, even if they are 301 to a dns "server not found" error

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Firefox :: New Tab Page, defect)

Description

[Mark Banner (:standard8)]

I've been working on bookmarks and as a result I'm working with a few older pages.

I noticed there's a few urls that are getting pinged every 5 minutes. These are urls that are either 301s or that are server not found.

I believe from elsewhere, that activity stream won't follow 301s, but it should also stop pinging these addresses.

Likewise, if the network is known to be working (I think there's a ping for this), and the server is not found, I'm not convinced it is right to keep on attempting to ping it every 5 mins.

Example addresses:

http://tests.themasta.com/tinderboxpushlog/ (301)
http://tbpl.mozilla.org/ (host not found)

Comment 1

[Ed Lee :Mardak]

What's the request? Is it for the thumbnail? I assume it's because Screenshots throws an error and doesn't resolve a value, so the cache entry doesn't update with a thumbnail. Maybe the cache should remember when a screenshot fails too?

Comment 2

[Mark Banner (:standard8)]

(In reply to Ed Lee :Mardak from comment #1)
> What's the request? Is it for the thumbnail?

It is coming from the fetchImage in HighlightsFeed.jsm

> I assume it's because
> Screenshots throws an error and doesn't resolve a value, so the cache entry
> doesn't update with a thumbnail. Maybe the cache should remember when a
> screenshot fails too?

Yes, I think that should probably be the case.

Comment 3

[Mark Banner (:standard8)]

I think I was wrong about the requests going on here, I think http://tests.themasta.com/tinderboxpushlog/ was redirecting to http://tbpl.mozilla.org/. The latter is the one with the DNS error. So every 5 mins we are pinging the original, getting the 301, and then trying the redirected item that's broken.

Comment 4

[Andrei Oprea [:andreio]]

Fixed in https://github.com/mozilla/activity-stream/pull/3773.

Comment 5

[Ed Lee :Mardak]

https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/6eece4a58299