> -----Original Message-----
> From: BAZLEY, Sebastian [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
> Sent: 03 April 2000 20:12
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: Bug in Netscape-Proxy/2.52 - how avoid ?
> 
> When using the a Netscape proxy server to fetch (GET) a file, 
> if the file
> has been cached, then part of the HTTP headers get stored 
> with the file.
> [This causes problems with binary files!]
> 
> Using debug shows the following header lines:
> 
> [snip]
> Warning: 10 host:port "Remote server was not contacted, 
> document may be out
> of date"
> Last checked: Mon Apr 03 17:49:01 2000
> Server: Netscape-Proxy/2.52
> Content-Length: nnn
> Content-Type: etc
> <blank line>
> 
> All the lines starting with "Last checked:" are copied to the 
> output file.
> 
> Inspection of the LWP code suggests that the problem is the 
> space in the
> "Last checked:" header line - presumably this is not a valid 
> HTTP header.

This is not valid HTTP protocol, as I have now discovered. Spaces are not
allowed in header tokens.

> 
> Temporarily changing the regular expression in HTTP.PM to 
> allow a space
> fixes the problem, but strikes me as a kludge.
> 
> Can anyone advise the best course of action (excluding fixing 
> the proxy
> server!) ?
> 
> One possibility would be to avoid the problem by telling the 
> proxy to fetch
> the file unconditionally - can anyone tell me what the magic 
> request header
> might be to effect this?
> 

In case anyone else hits the same problem, I have now found out that at
least the Netscape Proxy server honours the no-cache pragma, so adding the
line:

$request->header('Pragma' => 'no-cache');

to the script gets around the problem.

I've also discovered (thanks Andy M!) where to report bugs to Netscape:

http://help.netscape.com/forms/bug-server.html

but in this case there's no point, as version 2.52 is not the latest
version; the proxy server has reached 3.x.

-- 
Sebastian Bazley <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
The opinions expressed herein are my own, and are not necessarily endorsed
by my employer ...

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