Re: Incomplete downloads

Stuart Young wrote:

> I know a site I regularly get failed requests from (thought I am not sure
> if it's squid 2.1patch2 or just the site) is www.apache.org (downloading
> the source to 1.3.3.. I think it's an ftp link).

Due to lack of time I won't be able to spend more time on tracking this
down unless someone comes up with a debug trace of a request that really
fails, and only if they at the same time can prove that the fault is in
Squid and not the browser used. I really need more information than "I
think I usually have problem with that site" to be able to move forward
with this question.

Why this browser issue: Windows versions of Navigator (and Communicator)
is KNOWN to recode objects during download in certain situations.

* In some installations the file is always uncompressed after download
if it is compressed with UNIX compress or gzip.
* If Squid claims that the file is text/plain (which it does by default
on unknown filetypes, on popular request), then some installations
insist on translating linefeeds.

This is a browser issue and not really Squids fault. It can happen on
any HTTP download (proxied FTP requests counts as HTTP) where the server
provides information on how the file is encoded.

One way to mimimise the question if the error is in Squid or the browser
is to click on the download link (a small box at the right in Squids
directory listings) instead of the filename. Squid then marks the object
as a binary object of unknown type instead of what's said in mime.conf.
The reason why this download link is there is simply to get around
browsers that like to fiddle around with file contents when it thinks it
knows what the file type is and how to present/decode that filetype. If
that icon is not available on the filetype you have problems with then
configure mime.conf to include it (and if you never see any icons on the
right, then you have a mime.conf from 1.2beta. see mime.conf.default for
the "current" version).

mime.conf can be configured to avoid most of this. The most extreme
mime.conf config is only a default line saying application/binary, which
forces the browser to save every download to disk, as it is.

---
Henrik Nordstrom
Spare time Squid hacker