279442 - trailing "." in domain name not handled correctly

Status: RESOLVED EXPIRED

(Core :: Networking, defect)

Description

[Shad Sterling]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; rv:1.7.3) Gecko/20041001 Firefox/0.10.1
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; rv:1.7.3) Gecko/20041001 Firefox/0.10.1

It looks like a trailing "." is stripped for resolution, but not for the Host
header.  Certianly, for some sites, attempting to load the domain name including
a trailing. resolves but gets an error from the server, and for others gets no
feedback at all, while for some it ends up in the right place.

http://theinternetco.net. -- error message, works without trailing dot
http://earthlink.net. -- no feedback at all
http://google.com. -- resolves, loads, dot dissaperes
http://rapidweb.info. -- resolves, loads, shows dot


Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:



Expected Results:  
At worst, it should at least give some feedback.  At best, the behavior would be
consistent.

Comment 1

[:Gavin Sharp [email: [e-mail]]]

The trailing period has something to do with making the domain a FQDN and thus
the behavior is different depending on different urls. My knowledge in this area
is limited so I'm not sure whether or not this is a bug, or at what level the
period is making a difference. I have a feeling it's at the DNS level and thus
out of Firefox's control. The fact that the period disappears for google is
because of a redirect that happens server side (in my case, to google.ca).

benc, is this invalid?

Comment 2

[Josh Birnbaum]

bug 177919 has a relevant discussion of the Host: header.  It's also worth
noting that IE6 seems to handle this the same way.

Comment 3

[benc]

how do you know the "." is "stripped for resolution"?

Most likely the "." is transmited for DNS. It was when I tested DNS for
Netscape/Mozilla.

That is why you still see it in the header.

If you don't see it in the URL, it is because the site returned a redirect.

(I did just notice that Camino fixes up the URLS when I cut and paste them...)

Comment 4

[Shad Sterling]

I don't /know/ the "." is stripped for anything, that was suggested by the first
person I asked, and made sense to me.  Someone also suggested that including a
trailing "." violates HTTP, but I don't know where to look that up.

There are two things I'd like to see:
1) Never, ever, not give feedback after the user asks to load a URL
2) give an information bar suggesting the user omit the trailing "." if the
server returns something like "No Website Available"

Comment 5

[Christopher Hurley]

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-GB; rv:1.8b2) Gecko/20050318

The first two URLs WORKSFORME, although the first gives a different page to that
without the trailing dot. All URLs retain the dot unless redirected to another
page. This behaviour is the same as IE6.

Comment 6

[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
this problem in the latest version of the product (see below for how to obtain a
copy) or, for feature requests, if it's not present in the latest version and
you still believe we should implement it, please visit the URL of this bug
(given at the top of this mail) and add a comment to that effect, giving more
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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 7

[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.