151068 - Acrobat and .pdf files often break when loading

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(Core Graveyard :: Plug-ins, defect)

Description

[Don Colton]

I can load these acrobat pdf files using IE or Netscape with no problem, but
they break often in Mozilla, sometimes killing the browser entirely, most times
just displaying a partial page. I get a clean load less than half the time. I
have dozens more nearby in the website; just shorten the url and follow links.

Comment 1

[Adam Lock]

-> Plugins

Comment 2

[Peter Lubczynski]

http://colton.byuh.edu/courses/is231/2002.01/syl.pdf
...also shows up blank for me in IE 6 on WinXP.

Comment 3

[anthonyd]

using adobe acrobat plugin 5.0 this only works for me in *ONE* place: 4.x.  It 
is broken for me in IE 5.0, 6.0, Netscape 7.0, and Mozilla 1.0.

I experience *different* problems though.

On Mozilla(and all that implies) the browser appears to never  finish loading 
the page, it looks like it keeps querying the server.  it eventually comes up 
with a fileI/O error and a warning that the page has timed out. 

On IE it shows up with the correct number of pages (5 pages in this case) but 
no content is dispalyed.

If I open the page locally(off the hard drive) in acrobat reader 5.0, the page 
displays correctly.
If I open the page locally(pff the hard drive) in Mozilla 1.0, the page 
displays correctly.
If I open the page locally(pff the hard drive) in IE 5.0, the page displays 
correctly.

More to come...
anthonyd

Comment 4

[anthonyd]

after more investigation (from beppe) this bug appears to only happen with 
specific directories.

Again, everything works wonderfully well in 4.x.

Is it possible that something was 'broken'/'not looked at' or something in 4.x 
that allows this directory to be read (maybe ignoring permissions or something) 
that we now DO correctly in mozilla (and IE does correctly as well) that would 
cause us not to read this file?

cc'ing gagan to get his thoughts on this.

Comment 5

[Peter Lubczynski]

Since it works locally with both browsers, is this a network issue or Acrobat bug?

Comment 6

[Gagan]

Not sure I understand what's going on here. cc'ing darin for his views.

Comment 7

[serge (gone)]

taking this bug,
it looks like byte range problem.
BTW:
1. if I save content of http://colton.byuh.edu/courses/is231/2002.01/syl.pdf
and use my local http server to access it everything works fine.
2. ns4.78 shows blank page for me on above url

Comment 8

[Don Colton]

I submitted the bug and am running the server.  Server is a RedHat 7.0
installation with apache 1.3.14-3.  Running locally under Linux I can see the
files fine, which suggests it is not the version of RedHat or apache (although
could be).  Also the pdf in question was generated by LaTeX dvipdf, but I get
similar results with pdfs generated by Adobe Acrobat 4.0 (full version) running
in Win 2000.

Comment 9

[lmcquarr]

Folks -

If you have put the file(s) in question on another server, and it works fine, 
quite possibly there is a server problem.    There are definitely a few
known bugs with older versions of apache (and we have put some workaround
code in our netscape plug-in for the ones we have found over the years)>

Comment 10

[Don Colton]

Are pdf files a special case that get downloaded on demand a page at a time?  If
so that may explain local vs remote differences in behavior.

Comment 11

[serge (gone)]

yes, there are two completely different code in both mozilla & acrobat to serve
pdf content as files or as byte range streams, in which case http servers can
make a difference.

Comment 12

[anthonyd]

Ok, I started to type this in before when my machine blue screened on me, I 
will try again:

When beth and I were testing this, we did test it over the network on a 
different server, and it worked fine.  I'm thinking that liz's comment:
"There are definitely a few
known bugs with older versions of apache (and we have put some workaround
code in our netscape plug-in for the ones we have found over the years"

might be worth investigating.

confirming bug (even though it may not be our problem).

Comment 13

[rubydoo123]

marking as invalid: please see comments #9 and #12