210242 - wrong validation off entities with Vary: header

Status: RESOLVED EXPIRED

(Core :: Networking: HTTP, defect)

Description

[Robert Siemer]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.0.0) Gecko/20020623 Debian/1.0.0-0.woody.1
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.5a) Gecko/20030621

rfc2616 states that validation of Vary:-Responses needs comparison of ETag: or
Content-Location:. Mozilla seems to do a "normal" validation which fails if the
origin server didn't send ETags. Because it lacks comparing the
Content-Location: it can't notice changes in the content negotiation process if
the modification time of the new/other entity fullfills the condition of
Mozilla's GET request.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Set Language to English.
2. Go to http://www.spz.uni-karlsruhe.de/anmeldung/
3. Set Language to German.
4. Hit Reload
Actual Results:  
You still see the English page because Mozilla seems to be satisfied by the
"304 Not Modified" server response.

Expected Results:  
Comparison of the Content-Location: of the 304 response reveals that Mozilla is
using the wrong entity.

In the example I use the Apache 1.3 Content Negotiation which doesn't creates
ETags on SSI, but is forced to use the modification time of the shtml files
caused by the x-bit-hack Apache directive. The given URL consists of an English,
a German and a no-language-version (which is actually German (symlink)).

Comment 1

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

This is an automated message, with ID "auto-resolve01".

This bug has had no comments for a long time. Statistically, we have found that
bug reports that have not been confirmed by a second user after three months are
highly unlikely to be the source of a fix to the code.

While your input is very important to us, our resources are limited and so we
are asking for your help in focussing our efforts. If you can still reproduce
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you still believe we should implement it, please visit the URL of this bug
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If it is not a problem any longer, you need take no action. If this bug is not
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Thank you for your help in this matter.

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Comment 2

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

This bug has been automatically resolved after a period of inactivity (see above
comment). If anyone thinks this is incorrect, they should feel free to reopen it.