[squid-users] Problem with HTTP 1.1 replies

Hopefully this is the right list for this questions:

Currently running squid 2.6.STABLE21-3 (the RedHat distributed one),
and having problems with a specific site that makes of use of HTTP
1.1. The issue can be boiled down to this:

The site loads a page and asks the browser NOT to cache it. Then it
asks the browser to reload it a 2nd and 3rd time. The 2nd and 3rd
load depend on the browser pulling fresh data from the server. When
it works, it looks like this:

*** Client request #1:
GET http://www.[...snipped...].com/boost-gzip-cookie-test.html HTTP/1.0
Accept: */*
Referer: http://www.[...snipped...].com/
Accept-Language: en-us
UA-CPU: x86
Connection: Keep-Alive
User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.1; [...snipped...])
Cookie: has_js=1; cmTPSet=Y
Host: www.[...snipped...].com

*** Server reply #1 (headers only shown):
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Tue, 08 Feb 2011 03:48:57 GMT
Server: Apache/2.2.3 (Red Hat)
Last-Modified: Thu, 03 Feb 2011 21:32:11 GMT
ETag: "17c801c-15a-49b677f912cc0"
Accept-Ranges: bytes
Content-Length: 460
Cache-Control: no-store, no-cache, must-revalidate, post-check=0, pre-check=0
Expires: Sun, 19 Nov 1978 05:00:00 GMT
X-Header: Boost Citrus 1.8
Connection: close
Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8

*** Client request #2:
GET http://www.[...snipped...].com/boost-gzip-cookie-test.html HTTP/1.0
Accept: image/gif, image/x-xbitmap, [...snipped...], application/xaml+xml, */*
Accept-Language: en-us
UA-CPU: x86
Connection: Keep-Alive
User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.1; [...snipped...])
Host: www.[...snipped...].com
Cookie: has_js=1; cmTPSet=Y

*** Server reply #2:
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Tue, 08 Feb 2011 03:48:57 GMT
Server: Apache/2.2.3 (Red Hat)
Last-Modified: Thu, 03 Feb 2011 21:32:11 GMT
ETag: "17c801c-15a-49b677f912cc0"
Accept-Ranges: bytes
Content-Length: 460
Cache-Control: no-store, no-cache, must-revalidate, post-check=0, pre-check=0
Expires: Sun, 19 Nov 1978 05:00:00 GMT
X-Header: Boost Citrus 1.8
Connection: close
Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8

Request and Reply #3 are exactly the same as #2. As you can see, the
site depends on the browser honoring the Cache-Control header, which
is an HTTP 1.1 construct.

When traffic goes through Squid, however, what you get is this:

*** Client request #1:
GET http://www.[...snipped...].com/boost-gzip-cookie-test.html HTTP/1.0
Accept: */*
Referer: http://www.[...snipped...].com/
Accept-Language: en-us
UA-CPU: x86
Proxy-Connection: Keep-Alive
User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.1; [...snipped...])
Cookie: has_js=1; cmTPSet=Y
Proxy-Authorization: [...snipped...]
Host: www.[...snipped...].com

*** Reply #1:
HTTP/1.0 200 OK
Date: Tue, 08 Feb 2011 03:08:16 GMT
Server: Apache/2.2.3 (Red Hat)
Last-Modified: Thu, 03 Feb 2011 21:32:11 GMT
ETag: "17c801c-15a-49b677f912cc0"
Accept-Ranges: bytes
Content-Length: 346
Cache-Control: no-store, no-cache, must-revalidate, post-check=0, pre-check=0
Expires: Sun, 19 Nov 1978 05:00:00 GMT
X-Header: Boost Citrus 1.8
Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8
Content-Encoding: gzip
X-Cache: MISS from [...snipped...]
X-Cache-Lookup: MISS from [...snipped...]:3128
Via: 1.0 [...sniped...]:3128 (squid/2.6.STABLE21)
Proxy-Connection: keep-alive

*** Client request #2:
GET http://www.[...snipped...].com/boost-gzip-cookie-test.html HTTP/1.0
Accept: image/gif, image/x-xbitmap, image/jpeg, [...snipped...],
application/xaml+xml, */*
Accept-Language: en-us
UA-CPU: x86
Proxy-Connection: Keep-Alive
If-Modified-Since: Thu, 03 Feb 2011 21:32:11 GMT; length=346
User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.1; [...snipped...])
Cookie: has_js=1; cmTPSet=Y
Proxy-Authorization: [...snipped...]
Host: www.[...snipped...].com

*** Reply #2:
HTTP/1.0 304 Not Modified
Date: Tue, 08 Feb 2011 03:08:16 GMT
Server: Apache/2.2.3 (Red Hat)
ETag: "17c801c-15a-49b677f912cc0"
Expires: Sun, 19 Nov 1978 05:00:00 GMT
Cache-Control: no-store, no-cache, must-revalidate, post-check=0, pre-check=0
X-Cache: MISS from [...snipped...]
X-Cache-Lookup: MISS from [...snipped...]:3128
Via: 1.0 [...snipped...]:3128 (squid/2.6.STABLE21)
Proxy-Connection: keep-alive

Well, now the browser is sending "If-Modified-Since:" and Squid says
"Not Modified." That kind of breaks the subsequent pages that load
from that site. It seems to me that IE7 and IE8 (the two I tested
with) do not honor the Cache-Control header if they see an HTTP/1.0
response.

So, the question is: What are the possible solutions that I can implement?

Things like changing the browser or asking the site to stop doing the
boost-gzip-cookie-test are not viable solutions. I'm thinking about
an upgrade to 2.7 or 3.1, but that will take some time to plan and
test. Plus, I'm not sure that an upgrade will fix the problem,
anyway. Anyone know?

Ideally I'm hoping that there's some way to tell Squid not to modify
the server responses when the request asks fora
boost-gzip-cookie-test.html. Is there? Or maybe to insert a "Pragma:
No-cache" into the reply?

What other solutions are out there?

Thanks much!

P.S. The site shown in this example is
http://www.simpletruths.com/movies.asp. Any of the movies will do
this gzip test before loading, and Squid breaks them.
Received on Fri Feb 11 2011 - 02:19:17 MST