418771 - Loads bad MIME type from cache

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 198072

(Core :: Networking: Cache, defect)

Description

[cyaugin]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.8.1.1) Gecko/20061204 Firefox/2.0.0.1
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.8.1.1) Gecko/20061204 Firefox/2.0.0.1

For reasons that are beyond my ability to track, it seems that under some conditions Firefox will load a bad MIME type from its cache. This can happen when, for example, one is testing configurations for Apache. The consequence is that Firefox may store the MIME type in its cache and reuse it on subsequent accesses to similar pages. Specifically, it can cause .php pages to be treated as downloads. See more at this page: http://www.unixshell.com/forum/showthread.php?t=94

Reproducible: Sometimes

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Setup Apache without a PHP module.
2. Browse to a php page.
3. Select some way to deal with the file.
4. Reconfigure Apache with PHP and set MIME types accordingly.
5. Browse to a php page.
Actual Results:  
Firefox continues to treat php as a file for download.

Expected Results:  
Firefox should render the PHP-generated html since the server is now passing the correct MIME type.

Clearing the cache fixes the problem, but it is not an obvious solution.

Comment 2

[Matthias Versen [:Matti]]

The reason is very simple: 
Firefox asks Apache if the file changed and Apache tells Gecko that the file is unchanged which is untrue because the mime-type changed.