173147 - increase redirection limit

Status: VERIFIED FIXED

(Core :: Networking: HTTP, defect, P3)

Description

[Darin Fisher]

it seems that nytimes.com has been known to string together more than 10
redirects as indicated by this newsgroup posting:

> -------- Original Message --------
> Subject: Re: Mozilla and The New York Times
> Date: Sat, 05 Oct 2002 23:40:24 -0500
> From: Andy Boze <[e-mail]>
> Organization: Another Netscape Collabra Server User
> Newsgroups: netscape.public.mozilla.general
> References: <LwEn9.7333$[e-mail]>
> 
> Monte-Cristo wrote, On 10/5/2002 11:34 AM:
> 
> --- Original Message ---
> 
> > I use the french version of Mozilla 1.0.  When I go at the New York Times on
> > the Web, when I want to read an article, I click on the title and I get this
> > message (translated roughly from french):  "The limit of redirection of this
> > URL has exceded.  Download interrupted".  All the other sites I have no
> > problem.  Someone knows waht's going on ?  Thanks.
> >
> >
> I ran into the same thing on another site earlier this week. Apparently
> the default number of redirections that are allowed is 10. You can
> change it by adding the following line to your prefs.js file.
> 
> user_pref("network.http.redirection-limit", nn);
> 
> Substute some number larger than 10 for the nn. I used 20 and I stopped
> getting the error message from the site I was having trouble with.
> 
> One note. I use the latest 1.2a nightlies at home, and changing the
> redirection limit worked fine there. I'd been using 1.1 in the office,
> and it didn't appear that I could override the default redirection
> limit. No matter what number I used, I continued to get the redirection
> limit error message. I installed the latest 1.2a nightly at the office,
> and then I could access the site without the error message.
> 
> AB

seems like the obvious thing would be to increase our redirection limit.
heikki suggested increasing it to 20, and that seems reasonable to me.

Comment 1

[Darin Fisher]

Attachment: v1 prefs patch

Comment 2

[Doug Turner (:dougt)]

Comment on attachment 102051 [details] [diff] [review]
v1 prefs patch

r=dougt

Comment 3

[Heikki Toivonen (remove -bugzilla when emailing directly)]

Comment on attachment 102051 [details] [diff] [review]
v1 prefs patch

sr=heikki

Comment 4

[Darin Fisher]

fixed-on-trunk

Comment 5

[Daniel Veditz [:dveditz]]

adt approval to land on the branch. Please seek drivers approval before landing,
and add the fixed1.0.2 keyword afterwards.

Comment 6

[Daniel Veditz [:dveditz]]

I believe Darin meant to nominate it for drivers

Comment 7

[Asa Dotzler [:asa]]

Comment on attachment 102051 [details] [diff] [review]
v1 prefs patch

a=asa for checkin to 1.2beta (on behalf of drivers)

Comment 8

[Darin Fisher]

fixed1.0.2

Comment 9

[Tom Everingham]

verified1.0.2

from all.js 
// Maximum number of consecutive redirects before aborting.
pref("network.http.redirection-limit", 20);

checked winNT4, mac osX, linux rh6 - 10/10/02 builds

Comment 10

[Tom Everingham]

verified trunk - winNT, linux, mac

Comment 11

[SR]

This problem has been occuring very often when browsing Microsoft documentation on their site.
I've got an error (in french, so I don't paste it here) telling me that "the server does not correctly redirects the request". Firefox suggests that the problem can be caused by "deactivating cookies".

1- this error message is wrong, as it is not a server error, it is a client configuration that prevents the page to be displayed ;
2- the "new" (2002) increased limit to 20 is now often hit when fetching microsoft.com pages.

I'd suggest reopening this bug in order to increase again the default value to a number that does not prevent such widely used sites as microsoft.com one to be fetched.
I don't know the real-life use of this limit. I can imagine it useful for tests, and to prevent from being too severely affected by a server misconfiguration.
If there's no reason to prevent it, why not setting it to a really large value (whatever large is. Maybe 655360 could be adequate for Microsoft site ;-).

Comment 12

[--]

Can you please paste a URL that causes this limit to get hit for you? 20 redirects is A LOT.

Comment 13

[SR]

Sure :
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/303079

Comment 14

[--]

That main page doesn't even do a single redirect for me. Have you checked if it is that or if it is a sub resource on the page that triggers the error?

(and yes, my settings/coookies/preferences may cause the site to act differently for me than for others)

Comment 15

[--]

Or perhaps, to what value do you need to set the redirect value for the error to go away there? 30? It feels like there's another problem...

Comment 16

[SR]

No, I have tried no investigation on this case, too happy having it fixed, and confident in the fact that deleting cookies won't solve the problem as it did not for many others as I've read elsewhere. My bad.

Now, I make a check with firebug : it makes the page impossible to load (fails at its 201th attempt (HTTP 302) with redirect limit set to 200).
Livehttpheaders : hum, same, can't load.
Unload/close both : hey nothing is displayed anymore.

Hum, maybe the problem is elsewhere...
Deleting all "microsoft" cookies and... it works again.
OK, I now feel embarrassed :)
Very strange that increasing the redirect limit has fixed the problem until I launched firebug/livehttpheaders (or whatever).

Let's leave this bug alone, and sorry for the noise.