Re: polipo, dns, and firefox

Ciprian Dorin, Craciun wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 6, 2009 at 12:19 AM, Daniel Falk
> <[email protected]> wrote:
>   
>> Alan Jenkins wrote:
>>     
>>> On Sat, Jan 3, 2009 at 12:06 AM, Eric Radman <[email protected]> wrote:
>>>
>>>       
>>>> On 15:06 Fri 02 Jan     , Daniel Falk wrote:
>>>>
>>>>         
>>>>> Hello,
>>>>>
>>>>> If I type in a single word in the Firefox address bar, normal behavior
>>>>> is for Firefox to automatically complete the url if the domain exists or
>>>>> do a search if it doesn't (Google's "I'm Feeling Lucky" by default).  I
>>>>> like this feature and have come to rely on it, however Polipo breaks
>>>>> it.  It appears to be due to the fact that Polipo won't report this as a
>>>>> non-existing domain.  So all I get is a generated page from Polipo
>>>>> instead.
>>>>>
>>>>> Is there a way to achieve the functionality I had previously?  If not,
>>>>> could something be put in to fix this?
>>>>>
>>>>>           
>>>> Does Firefox work the same way when using any other HTTP proxy? This
>>>> doesn't sound like a feature that a proxy inhibits or supports.
>>>>
>>>>         
>>> The problem is in Firefox.  I didn't even realise Firefox supported
>>> this feature, I've used polipo for so long.
>>>
>>> The KDE browser Konqueror manages to do it when using polipo.
>>> Presumably it picks up on the distinct error code (504) that polipo
>>> returns for "host not found".
>>>
>>> Since you're interested, perhaps you could file a bug against Firefox.
>>>
>>> Thanks!
>>> Alan
>>>
>>>       
>> Ok, I went to go file a bug and I found the original bug report (
>> https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2875 ).  It is from 1998!
>>
>> If it hasn't gotten fixed by now, it's not likely to.  But I think the
>> main problem is that there is no clear resolution on how to fix it.
>> Polipo returns a 504, and other proxies return different codes.  Is it
>> impossible for a proxy to return a "host not found" DNS response instead
>> of or in addition to an HTTP response?
>>
>> Also: squid allows for a workaround in that you can configure the error
>> page.  Thus, a custom error page can give a link to the "I'm Feeling
>> Lucky" or whatever.  Polipo doesn't allow for this, does it?
>>
>> Thanks!
>> Daniel
>>     
>
>
>     One of my colleagues suggested that usually the developers at
> Mozilla prioritize the bugs by the interest of the users in it. And
> the interest could be shown by voting the bug or by adding yourself to
> the CC list... What I've just did... :)
>
>     So, if you would like to "help" the development team, maybe we all
> should just vote the bug... :) :)
>   
Agreed.  I didn't see until now that you can vote for bugs.  It only has 
10 votes right now, which isn't very good.  The highest voted bug has 646.
>     Ciprian Crăciun.
>
>     P.S.: I'm not being childish, but I think that a bug like this
> could have been easily solved in the last 10 years... Right on the
> spot I would say that there could be a simple solution like the
> following one (I know it's a hack): if the proxy responds with a
> status other than 100, 200, or 300, and inside the body there is the
> regular expression ^.*<h1>.*host not found .*</h1>.*$, meaning, the
> request contains the text "host not found", which all the proxies
> do...
>   

 From a development perspective, something seems wrong about searching 
for "Host not found", especially if the proxy doesn't respond in the 
English language.  I just wish there were a separate HTTP status code 
for this.  It looks as if the main problem, and why this bug has gone 
unanswered for so long, is that there's no clear-cut solution.  
Personally, I would have gone a different way with the solution, like 
have the browser attempt the search for certain status codes: 504 and 
potentially others.  And if the search fails, don't display the search 
to the user i.e., pretend like you never tried to search.

For what it's worth, I don't think it's such a bad idea to have the 
proxy attempt the search for you as well.  Someone would just have to 
add it to polipo as an optional feature.



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