466992 - Firefox has detected that the server is redirecting the request for this address in a way that will never complete

Status: VERIFIED INVALID

(Firefox :: General, defect)

Description

[John]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9.0.4) Gecko/2008102920 Firefox/3.0.4
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9.0.4) Gecko/2008102920 Firefox/3.0.4

Connecting to mail.yahoo.com two possibilities:

1) After cleaning cookies and cache, I get the login page, but after entering
   username and password, I get the error below.

2) without cleaning cookies and cache, I immediately get the error page:

Redirect Loop

      

      
      
      

      
        
        

          

Firefox has detected that the server is redirecting the request for this address in a way that will never complete.

        


        
        

The browser has stopped trying to retrieve the requested item. The site is redirecting the request in a way that will never complete.

    * Have you disabled or blocked cookies required by this site?
    * NOTE: If accepting the site's cookies does not resolve the problem, it is likely a server configuration issue and not your computer.


Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Connect to mail.yahoo.com (with a 'dirty cache' and cookies not deleted

or

1. Connect to mail.yahoo.com, enter the username and password
2. Click continue/
Actual Results:  
Error page complaining about redirection

Expected Results:  
My mail account!

I've tried:

1) Firefox 3.0.3,
2) Firefox 3.0.4,
3) Firefox 2.0.0.18

All trying to clean up cookies/cache etc. Also tried with the user agent
switcher on and off. I finally resorted to capturing the HTTP flow, and 
noticed:

1) I ask connection with mail.yahoo.com, and see the 
   GET /ym/login HTTP/1.1 going out (with all the browser info)

2) yahoo then answers with a 302 error:
   HTTP/1.1 302 Moved
   with a new location:
   http://f133.mail.yahoo.com/ym/login
   and even a hint in html: 
   The document has moved <A HREF="http://f133.mail.yahoo.com/ym/login">here

3) BUT, firefox insists on ignoring that address:
   GET /ym/login HTTP/1.1
   (there is no new DNS request to resolve the new address, and the IP is the
   same, so evidently the page served is the same).

I've attached the captured data from wireshark (I still have ethereal),
starting the transaction at the moment 'enter' is pressed after entering
mail.yahoo.com in FF. The first capture seen is the DNS lookup of the
mail.yahoo.com domain. (There may be a couple of 'pings' in between, nothing
to do with this problem.

Comment 1

[John]

Attachment: Capture (ethereal/wireshark)

Capture of the transaction to the website, starting just after 
requesting the mail.yahoo.com page.

Comment 2

[John]

Please disregard my analysis of the log. I've attached the correct one, and this shows indeed a new IP being reported for f133.mail.yahoo.com, but the redirection problem persists (making me suspect the problem could actually be at yahoo?)

Comment 3

[Arthur]

(This is a continuation of the discussion started in bug 402216) Yes, from the log it looks as if Firefox is doing everything as expected (following the redirection to f133.mail.yahoo.com from the very same host). It's still possible that we've overlooked some cookie detail or that something is different from what Yahoo expects a Firefox browser to do.

I've tried reproducing the issue but I don't have any problems with my current stable build under Linux to log in via mail.yahoo.com. Could you try starting Firefox with the "-safe-mode" option and see whether the issue remains?

Comment 4

[John]

Yes, same with -safe-mode enabled. I even selected to disable all addons to be sure.

I tried to use 'links', and get:
                 Javascript is attempting to go to URL
        "http://us.f133.mail.yahoo.com/ym/login?.rand=6tplhht2uv6ll".

Allowing to follow the link then causes the redirection problem:

            Error loading http://f133.mail.yahoo.com/ym/login:
                             Cyclic redirect

Also tried some of the anonymizers, but the free ones don't support SSL it seems. Could this problem be actually caused by some SSL problem? I never had these problems before, and use SSL/SSH all the time.

John

Comment 5

[Arthur]

Strange. You didn't use https in the wireshark log. But I've tried it with SSL, works for me as well. Did you try login.yahoo.com?

Is there anything between Firefox and Yahoo? A proxy (Squid etc.), a VPN connection, some firewall, a special router?

Comment 6

[Matthias Versen [:Matti]]

Can you please also try a new profile ?
http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Managing+profiles

If the new profile fails then something else is wrong.

Comment 7

[John]

I suppose mail.yahoo.com will automatically switch on SSL when trying to log
in.
Just to be sure I tried to log in with https://mail.yahoo.com, and get that the
security certificate is only valid for login.yahoo.com

login.yahoo.com works fine (to log in, change preferences etc.), but says 'your
inbox is not available, please use yahoo mail to access you content'. Doing so
(using the link) gives the redirection problem again. The problem seems to be
specifically with YM...

Yes, I have the iptables firewall installed. I hasn't given me any problem yet,
as it is a really simple script. Would Y! use some non-standard ports?

Will try a new profile now.

Comment 8

[John]

New profile - same results. Of course, I could get to the mail.yahoo.com page (just as if I cleared cookies etc), but then I can't log in.

BTW, I also checked the SSH process - port 443 is ok, and the entire TLS protocol is run just fine for login.yahoo.com

Comment 9

[Arthur]

Did you try it with a different browser, or probably better with a different computer on a different network? I'd say either something with your Yahoo mail account is awry and Yahoo tries to connect you to one special web-mail server or something sits in between your computer and yahoo and does some strange stuff. To rule out the former, you could also try a different yahoo account (if you have one).

Comment 10

[John]

Goodness... I created a new account and everything works (both the Beta interfase and the Classic one). There seem to be still some kinks in Yahoo software ;-)

I'll try to contact Yahoo about the problem, just maybe it interests them to get it solved.

Sorry for the noise, and thanks for all the suggestions!

John

Comment 11

[Arthur]

Good to hear. Marking verified.

Comment 12

[nanu1402]

For about a week I received this same error message when trying to access http://www.sfbc.com/.  I could successfully retrieve the login page using IE, but Firefox kept giving me the same error message that is listed above.  Firefox can now successfully access this site.  (Go figure...)