Re: Squid not caching pages served from Netscape servers?

On Tue, 25 Aug 1998, Mike Laster wrote:

> --On Tue, Aug 25, 1998 9:00 PM -0600 Alex Rousskov <rousskov@nlanr.net>
> wrote:
> > ./client -H "If-Modified-Since: Wed, 26 Aug 1998 02:54:42 GMT\n" -p 80
> > -h www.netscape.com / | less
> >
> > Put the appropriate date from the 200 response for the same object.
>
> My version of client doesn't seem to understand "-H" It understands:
> <snip>

Oops. I forgot that you are using Squid 1.1. "-H" is available in Squid 1.2
distribution only. (It allows you to add any header(s) to the request). You
can emulate the IMS request using "-i", but you will have to calculate the
number of seconds.
 
> Anyway, is this a known defect with Netscape servers, or a misconfiguration
> on my part?

Neither. It is the desire of the origin _site_ to include custom content with
every reply:

$ ./client -p 80 -h www.netscape.com / > /tmp/t1
$ ./client -p 80 -h www.netscape.com / > /tmp/t2
$ ./client -p 80 -h www.netscape.com / > /tmp/t3

$ diff3 /tmp/t{1,2,3} # omitting Date: differences
Set-cookie: NGUserID=cfc84949-730-904104030-3; ...

--
Set-cookie: NGUserID=cfc84949-730-904104034-2; ...
--
Set-cookie: NGUserID=cfc84949-4479-904104037-1; ...
It may look stupid, but it is their right given them by HTTP.
> This seems to indicate that the server isn't implicitly broken,
> just possibly misconfigured.
Well, let's say configured not to return 304s. If it is what the content
provider wanted, it is not a misconfiguration.
> Maybe I'm just extremely luckly, but every single site in my daily bookmark
> list seems to have this same problem.
I bet you are not alone. Most popular sites "tune" their servers in one way
or the other. 
> Is this a problem that I can solve by changing squid.conf,
> or is it something that the server operators need to correct?
For better or worse, in Squid 1.2, you can do a lot of things that affect
refresh rules, up to violating every single refresh-related MUST of the HTTP
if you dare. Sorry, I do not remember what was available in 1.1; maybe
somebody else on the list will help you with that.
Alex.