323283 - webmail.aol.com - Bad redirect with any 2006 Gecko build

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Tech Evangelism Graveyard :: English US, defect)

Description

[Wayne Woods]

I expected I'd find a dupe for this one, but I can't...

If I try to go to http://webmail.aol.com/ using the latest Deer Park nightlies, it instead produces a browser error page which says:
----------
The page isn't redirecting properly
Firefox has detected that the server is redirecting the request for this address in a way that will never complete.
*This problem can sometimes be caused by disabling or refusing to accept cookies.
----------

It's broken in both Win XP and Mac OS X nightlies. Even after cookies and cache are erased.

It definitely seems to be a bug with the browser, rather than the web page/server, because the page loads fine in both IE and Safari on their respective platforms. AND it still works in Deer Park nightlies of 20051231 and earlier. 20060101 is the first broken build... perhaps a warning of the dangers of coding on New Year's Eve? ;)

I'm sorry I can't be any more use with the diagnostics. As the page obviously involves some sort of redirect, I can't tell what the initial code is supposed to be. I've set the component to cookies as an initial guess based on the warning message.

Comment 1

[Ria Klaassen (not reading all bugmail)]

Even if I set network.http.redirection-limit to 200 I get that error finally.

Comment 2

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

This is _so_ evang.  The server response for the 2005-12-31 build is:

http response [
  HTTP/1.1 200 OK
  Date: Sat, 14 Jan 2006 05:05:02 GMT
  Server: Microsoft-IIS/6.0
  X-AspNet-Version: 1.1.4322
  Set-Cookie: Version=15106; domain=d01.webmail.aol.com; expires=Sat, 28-Jan-2006 05:05:02 GMT; path=/
  Cache-Control: no-cache
  Pragma: no-cache
  Expires: -1
  Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8
  Content-Length: 513
]

The server response for the 2006-01-01 build is:

http response [
  HTTP/1.1 302 Found
  Date: Sat, 14 Jan 2006 05:05:21 GMT
  Server: Microsoft-IIS/6.0
  X-AspNet-Version: 1.1.4322
  Location: http://mail.aol.com/Help/detail_misc_sysrequirements.aspx
  Cache-Control: private
  Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8
  Content-Length: 174
]

attempting to follow this redirect results in the same exact response over and over.

The only difference between the two requests is the following line:

  User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9a1) Gecko/20060101 SeaMonkey/1.5a

vs

  User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9a1) Gecko/20051231 SeaMonkey/1.5a

and simply resetting the "Gecko/..." part in the newer build makes this work.  In fact, any UA that doesn't fit some sort of criteria on their end (eg wget) gets the same issues.

Chris, Brendan says you might have contacts at AOL that might be able to help us get this fixed on their end...

Comment 3

[David Baron :dbaron: (⌚️UTC-4, no longer working on Mozilla)]

This will probably become a much bigger deal when we ship the first Firefox security updates in 2006.  Firefox 1.5.0.1 is expected around the end of this month -- see http://developer.mozilla.org/devnews/index.php/2006/01/03/18011501-code-freeze-approaching/

Comment 4

[Wayne Woods]

Freaky! I imagine it could also affect IE or Safari if they happen to release new builds. Thanks for sorting it out.

Comment 5

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

For what it's worth, this is definitely a problem with the 1.5.0.1 builds...  Should we somehow track the release depending on this bug?

Comment 6

[Rafael Ebron (:rebron)]

Sent over to AOL Mail team to address.  

Comment 7

[Rafael Ebron (:rebron)]

This will be fixed with a server-side push targeted for next week.

Comment 8

[Marc Bejarano]

the same thing happens with http://mail.aol.com, which is where trillian (an AIM client) takes you when it thinks you have new AOL mail.  and on 1/25, AOL sent mail to all AIM users telling them that AOL mail is now free and gives you 2 gigs, so lots of folks will see this.

Comment 9

[Samuel Sidler (old account; do not CC)]

*** Bug 323785 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 10

[Chris Lawson (gone)]

*** Bug 325191 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 11

[Jesse Ruderman]

This still hasn't been fixed on AOL's server.  Firefox 1.5.0.1 was just released and now users can't access AOL webmail :(

Comment 12

[Rafael Ebron (:rebron)]

argh.  Emailed AOL Webmail PM.

Comment 13

[Judson Valeski]

a friend sitting next to me is using the latest FFox on windows and isn't seeing this. I'm seeing it on mac.

Comment 14

[Rafael Ebron (:rebron)]

Are folks still seeing this issue?  AOL folks say they put a fix out this morning.

Comment 15

[Wayne Woods]

Just checked, and looks like it's fixed!

Comment 16

[Judson Valeski]

- late last night a fix went out to production webmail.aol.com; most users should no longer be seeing this.
- the old beta.webmail.aol.com site is still broken (only relevant if you had a beta acct).
- if you had a beta acct originally, apparently there are still some issues w/ production webmail.aol.com, though, apparently they are not redirect issues as outlined in this bug.