Date: Tue, 24 Oct 1995 11:46:16 -0400
Message-Id: <199510241546.LAA16386@luers.qosina.com>
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To: new-httpd@hyperreal.com
From: "Aram W. Mirzadeh" <awm@qosina.com>
Subject: WWW Form Bug Report: "Netscape & Mosaic cache files
  inappropriately when received from Apache/NCSA server" on Linux
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>X-POP3-Rcpt: awm@luers.qosina.com
>From: aixgod@ix.netcom.com
>To: awm@qosina.com
>Date: Tue Oct 24  7:57:06 1995
>Subject: WWW Form Bug Report: "Netscape & Mosaic cache files
inappropriately when received from Apache/NCSA server" on Linux
>
>Submitter: aixgod@ix.netcom.com
>Operating system: Linux, version: 
>Extra Modules used: 
>URL exhibiting problem: 
>
>Symptoms:
>--
>Note that I have not tested this problem on latest version of Apache or
NCSA.  Also, note that I think that this is a bug with Netscape 2.0b and
latest version of Mosaic but I thought I better report it to you just in
case.  Put a file, such as test123.pdf in a directory on the Apache server.
Now download that file using Netscape 2.0b (for Unix or Windows) by entering
the URL then save the file to disk.  Now, copy a new file over test123.pdf
(but name it test123.pdf).  Make sure they are different sizes.  Now,
download the file using Netscape as above. Save to disk as a different file
name.  You will notice that the original test123.pdf and the new test123.pdf
that you saved are the SAME size.  This is because Netscape cached the first
test123.pdf and didn't reload from the server the next time you went to
download it.  On versions of Netscape prior to 2.0b this behavior doesn't
happen.  That made me think that this is a bug with Netscape.  However, I
then tried this same s!
> cenario using Netscape 2.0b but using different http servers.  Both Apache
(0.6.5) and NCSA exhibited the problem.  However, IBM's AIX Server (which is
based on CERN) did NOT exhibit the problem with Netscape 2.0b.  Very
strange.  So, I then started looking at the HTTP headers output by Cern and
NCSA/Apache and noticed some differences. I modified my Apache source to try
to get the headers as close as possible to the CERN version but it made no
difference.  So, this is probably a bug in Netscape 2.0b and Mosaic.
However, it concerns me that it doesn't happen on CERN based servers.  That
makes me think that Netscape & Mosaic have tightened up on their HTTP
compliance and that somehow it's not fully compatible with NCSA-based
servers thus resulting in the cache problem.  Note that the Last-modified
time was sent by all three servers I tested.
>--
>
>Backtrace:
>--
>
>--
>
>
--
Aram W. Mirzadeh, MIS Manager, Qosina Corporation
http://www.qosina.com/~awm/, awm@qosina.com
Apache httpd server team http://www.apache.org