GoDaddy Serves Blank Pages to Safari & Opera 397
zackmac writes "For over two weeks domain registrar GoDaddy has been serving blank pages to Safari and Opera users who attempt to access sites using its domain forwarding and masking service. GoDaddy is blaming Apple as the source of the problem, and with nowhere to turn, Mac users are flocking to Apple's support forums to discuss the issue in-depth. Apple has so far been unresponsive and GoDaddy has directed affected customers to contact Apple Support. An inconvienent workaround is to open the website first in Firefox or Internet Explorer and then the page will load in Safari or Opera. Speculation abounds as to the cause of the problem and how to fix it. The current belief is malformed headers, an invalid 302 header with a bogus location and a redirect loop."
Can anyone confirm this? (Score:5, Interesting)
http://www.photosparks.com/ [photosparks.com]
Re:Can anyone confirm this? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Can anyone confirm this? (Score:2, Funny)
I didn't know Oprah could surf the web!
Re:Can anyone confirm this? (Score:4, Funny)
oh... the web. No. She can't do that.
* Yes I know she's in her "waning" phase and not particularly fat right now, but just wait.
Re:Can anyone confirm this? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Can anyone confirm this? (Score:3, Interesting)
$ nc www.photosparks.com 80 /?ABCDEFGH
GET / HTTP/1.1
HTTP/1.1 302 Moved Temporarily
Content-Length: 0
Location:
$ nc www.photosparks.com 80 /?ABCDEFGH HTTP/1.1 /
GET
HTTP/1.1 302 Moved Temporarily
Content-Length: 0
Location:
Note - the response came back instantly -- before I could enter the Host: header.
Re:Can anyone confirm this? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Can anyone confirm this? (Score:5, Informative)
Here's my Ethereal trace:
GET / HTTP/1.1
Host: www.photosparks.com
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8) Gecko/20051111 Firefox/1.5
Accept: text/xml,application/xml,application/xhtml+xml,te
Accept-Language: en-gb,en-ca;q=0.7,en;q=0.3
Accept-Encoding: gzip,deflate
Accept-Charset: ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.7
Keep-Alive: 300
Connection: keep-alive
Referer: http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/12/08
HTTP/1.1 302 Moved Temporarily
Content-Length: 0
Location:
GET
Host: www.photosparks.com
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8) Gecko/20051111 Firefox/1.5
Accept: text/xml,application/xml,application/xhtml+xml,te
Accept-Language: en-gb,en-ca;q=0.7,en;q=0.3
Accept-Encoding: gzip,deflate
Accept-Charset: ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.7
Keep-Alive: 300
Connection: keep-alive
Referer: http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/12/08
HTTP/1.1 302 Moved Temporarily
Content-Length: 0
Location: /
GET / HTTP/1.1
Host: www.photosparks.com
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8) Gecko/20051111 Firefox/1.5
Accept: text/xml,application/xml,application/xhtml+xml,te
Accept-Language: en-gb,en-ca;q=0.7,en;q=0.3
Accept-Encoding: gzip,deflate
Accept-Charset: ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.7
Keep-Alive: 300
Connection: keep-alive
Referer: http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/12/08
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Fri, 09 Dec 2005 00:42:58 GMT
Server: Apache/1.3.31 (Unix) mod_pointer/0.8 PHP/4.4.1
X-Powered-By: PHP/4.4.1
Connection: close
Transfer-Encoding: chunked
Content-Type: text/html
[...]
Re:Can anyone confirm this? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Can anyone confirm this? (Score:3, Interesting)
An RFC is not usually a detailed specification, so requiring certain specific behavior from a browser is unwise if that behavior is not clearly st
Re:But it doesn't loop (Score:3, Informative)
I'm not sure why GoDaddy is doing the double-moved-temporarily thing. How are other ISPs performing the redirects?
Re:Can anyone confirm this? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Can anyone confirm this? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Can anyone confirm this? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Can anyone confirm this? (Score:2)
Re:Can anyone confirm this? (Score:2)
Re:Can anyone confirm this? (Score:2)
Opera Version 8.51
Build 1462
Platform Linux
System i686, 2.6.14-halb5
Qt library 3.3.5
Java Java Runtime Environment installed
Re:Can anyone confirm this? (Score:3, Informative)
10 2.104156 64.202.167.129 -> 10.1.1.113 HTTP HTTP/1.1 302 Moved Temporarily
Frame 9 (312 bytes on wire, 312 bytes captured)
Arrival Time: Dec 8, 2005 17:20:12.255431000
Time delta from previous packet: 0.000944000 seconds
Time relative to first packet: 2.063551000 seconds
Frame Number: 9
Packet Length: 312 bytes
Re:Can anyone confirm this? Flash? (Score:2, Insightful)
Most likely, If i click the "f" a macromedia flash animation will appear. I'm not willing to take that chance.
I'm using firefox on linux and I use the firefox flash blocker extension.
don't be scared... (Score:2)
Re:Can anyone confirm this? (Score:2)
-b
Re:Can anyone confirm this? (Score:3, Insightful)
Broken redirect usage. This provider is the suxx0rsz.
You are in the postition to ask them to change the
behaviour of their servers to RFC compliance.
I'd suggest you do it.
And change the provider if they don't fix it.
Blank page for me, too (Score:2)
Re:Can anyone confirm this? (Score:2)
Q: I don't understand the problem. Here is my site, can you see it?
A: No.
Q: I don't understand the problem. Here is my site, can you see it?
A: No.
Q: I don't understand the problem. Here is my site, can you see it?
A: No.
Guys, we get it. No one can see your site! It's either malformed headers coming out of a "domain masking" service that you knew was designed to deceive browsers into display
Thanks... (Score:2)
By the way, is your name Dutch? I spent a few years in Germany near the border of NL, and we popped over all the time for shopping/movies/dining, etc.
Re:Can anyone confirm this? (Score:5, Informative)
Basically, GoDaddy's web server is fundamentally broken and not spec compliant. No browser should legitimately be showing data. Whoever wrote this web server should be repeatedly slapped with a wet noodle.
Re:Can anyone confirm this? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Can anyone confirm this? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Can anyone confirm this? (Score:4, Interesting)
For the sake of interoperability it's usually good to design things so they "always work". But if you are testing it makes sense to test with a less robust platform than IE. You WANT to find the problems, not mask them.
This does not change the fact that yeah, GoDaddy's server IS likely broken. But if they hadn't tested with IE they would have known.
Apple's fault? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Apple's fault? (Score:3, Funny)
They're blaming global warming too.
Re:Apple's fault? (Score:5, Funny)
-Michael Crichton
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Blaming Apple? Who? Got a Source? (Score:5, Informative)
I just wrote and received the following response from Godaddy:
"Response from WILLIAM G
12/07/2005 04:23 PM
Dear Matthew Wanderer
Thank you for contacting Customer Support.
Apple recently released an update to Java, Version J2SE 5.0. There is a bug in this release that has caused forwarding to stop working properly for both the browsers Safari and Opera on Mac OS X. You will need to report this bug to Apple Computers using the Report Bugs feature from within the Safari menu. This situation was caused by changes in Java and not GoDaddy. Because of that a resolution is completely out of our hands. I apologize for any inconvenience that this may cause.
Please let us know if we can help you in any other way."
They claim it's the Java update, which is what I thought it might be in my initial post. Frustrating is just the beginning here because I quite sure Apple will pass the buck as well, and why wouldn't they.
Re:Blaming Apple? Who? Got a Source? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Apple's fault? (Score:3, Insightful)
Had it been, say, Camino and Firefox, or Safari and Konqueror, I might be a little more inclined to believe them, but come on!
Of course, they claim it's the OS-wide Java update... but how exactly is that supposed to be related to native code that uses HTTP?
goDaddy sucks (Score:2, Informative)
FTFA (Score:5, Informative)
Re:FTFA (Score:2)
Re:FTFA (Score:3, Insightful)
Huh? If you're using a product to supply a service, and that product is wonky and affects your service, then by definition it's a glitch in your service.
To be simpler: It's either the service you're providing, or the client. You've established that it's not the client.
And why (Score:2)
Re:And why (Score:2, Offtopic)
Godaddy sucks (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Godaddy sucks (Score:5, Informative)
At 2004, when the domain suppose to expire, I did not want to renew this domain, because it was for my ex-girlfriend. Besides the credit card that I used to register for this domain expired in 2003.
In August 2004, I noticed a charge to my credit card from GoDaddy. I argued that they did not have right to charge my credit card because:
1. The expiration date in their record is expired.
2. They never got any consent from me to auto renew the domain.
When I spoke with their customer service, the customer service managed to trick me to tell my new expiration date, and she subsequently changed the expiration information at their records, as I could see from their webpage.
I know I was stupid to be tricked like that, but I suppose this is not a company suppose to work.
Re:Godaddy sucks (Score:2)
If you have a problem with a company that charges your credit card incorrectly or fraudulently you talk to the company first, but you talk to your credit card issuer second and initiate a chargeback.
Re:Godaddy sucks (Score:2)
Re:Godaddy sucks (Score:5, Insightful)
That being said, I must say that everything I have ever learned by talking to existing Godaddy customers, Godaddy employees whom I know, and observation in general, I can say that what I have noticed conflicts with what you have said entirely. I realize that there is always bound to be someone who is going to be unhappy (e.g., you can't satisfy all the people all of the time) but honestly your complaint is the first I've ever heard of with Godaddy -- which is pretty amazing considering how many customers they have.
Another thing I like about them in particular, in addition to (again, what I believe, personally) their good reputation as a web hosting services and domain registrar is that they do not tolerate spammers and make a fairly decent effort to terminate them as they discover them (e.g., source: news.admin.net-abuse.email
My $0.02.
Weird. (Score:5, Interesting)
> GET / HTTP/1.1
< HTTP/1.x 302 Moved Temporarily /?ABCDEFGH
< Location:
> GET /?ABCDEFGH HTTP/1.1
< HTTP/1.x 302 Moved Temporarily
< Location: /
> GET / HTTP/1.1
< HTTP/1.x 200 OK
It appears that the page is redirecting and then redirecting back. I can imagine that would confuse some browsers. Especially if the browser cached the first redirect and didn't actually fetch the same exact page a second time.
There is probably something in the http spec about not caching temporary redirects. In fact not caching them makes perfect sense to me. So safari has a bug of some sort with redirect caching.
However, what the server is doing seems to be fairly brain dead as well. Why would you redirect away and then redirect back? It appears that there is not cookie set between the two. The server must be remembering your IP address and serving you actual content on the second hit from that IP Address. That would certainly explain the "teaching issue" that causes safari to work with these sites after visiting with firefox.
The only explanation that I can come up with is that somebody discovered this obscure caching bug in safari and built a system to expose it. It seems that the blank page problem would be easy to fix in either safari or the web server.
Re:Weird. (Score:3, Insightful)
-b
Relative 302s violate the RFC (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec14. html#sec14.30 [w3.org]
Re:Weird. (Score:5, Interesting)
---
$ curl -D - http://www.photosparks.com/?ABCDEFGH
HTTP/1.0 200 OK
Connection: Close
Pragma: no-cache
cache-control: no-cache
Content-Type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1
<HTML><HEAD><META HTTP-EQUIV="Refresh" CONTENT="0.1; URL=/?ABCDEFGH">
<META HTTP-EQUIV="Pragma" CONTENT="no cache">
<META HTTP-EQUIV="Expires" CONTENT="-1">
</HEAD></HTML>
---
Ever since then, I get the intended result for every redirect page under GoDaddy, in _Safari_ as well as from curl.
The first time I tested this, I got the white page. All I've done since is make a couple of requests from the command line, and now it all works.
It's not related to caching or cookies, that's for sure. It must be IP tracking somewhere along the line.
Re:Weird. (Score:2)
10.3 Redirection 3xx
Re:Weird. (Score:2)
More info on cookie switching [foundrynet.com]
Worst. Webhost. Ever. (Score:2)
I've gone back to running my own server just out of sheer frustration!
They own many of their value added companies, but act as if they don't so they can pass the buck/point fingers.
They spend more on marketing than on servicing.
GoDaddy takes advantage of people... (Score:2)
Sometimes GoDaddy [godaddy.com] web pages are so full of ads for dubious services that it is difficult to find the useful content.
Re:Worst. Webhost. Ever. (Score:2)
I have written Godaddy about this problem and asked them to either allow me to save sessions to a user defined place or change the time
redirects from GoDaddy appear hosed (Score:5, Informative)
Notice that I specified HTTP/1.1, but it never even gave me a chance to specify a host header. The 302 came almost immediately after I hit Enter on the GET line. I can't see how that could possibly be a Safari or Opera problem.
GoDaddy can... (Score:3, Funny)
GoDaddy's Fault (Score:5, Informative)
GoDaddy's server is returning:
This is a violation of RFC 2616. Section 14.30 specifies the Location header to contain an absolute URI:
Firefox is tolerant of the spec violation and Safari and Opera are apparently not. I spent many years writing HTTP proxies and after working around many broken clients and server, I have little sympathy for those who violate the spec and then whine that others should work around the problem. GoDaddy needs to fix their server. Accomodating their brokeness, just will encourage others to be sloppy as well.
Re:GoDaddy's Fault, not allowing client headers (Score:3, Informative)
Godaddy's servers IMMEDIATLY respond with the redirect not allowing the client to specify it's user agent, the host it's trying to access (http 1.1 spec) or any other headers. as it responds with the 302 reponse after ONE CR/LF instead of 2 CR/LF which is required by the HTTP specification..
This is CLEARLY Go Daddy incorrectly following the HTTP specification with their server.
Re:GoDaddy's Fault (Score:2)
Re:GoDaddy's Fault (Score:5, Informative)
This is NOT a bug (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:This is NOT a bug (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:This is NOT a bug (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:This is NOT a bug (Score:5, Funny)
It is now:
Domain Name: STEALYOURPASSWORD.COM
Status: ACTIVE
Creation Date: 08-dec-2005
Proud book club member (Score:2, Funny)
Blaming apple?? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Blaming apple?? (Score:5, Funny)
Does it rhyme with "Crisco"?
Re:Blaming apple?? (Score:3, Interesting)
Or, rephrase it nicely. Trust me on this one. I only spent 30s on this analysis, but I'm arrogant^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hexperienced enough to know I'm right.
Oh, dear... Waiting for patches... (Score:3, Insightful)
The real cause (in Safari) (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:The real cause (in Safari) (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:The real cause (in Safari) (Score:2)
Re:The real cause (in Safari) (Score:2)
From the website.... (Score:5, Informative)
It doesn't actually look as though GoDaddy is blaming Apple as much as simply not knowing what the actual culprit is. A small, but possibly important, difference.
That being said, I really hate their name.
GoDaddy's Next Superbowl Commercial (Score:2, Funny)
Why I didn't use GoDaddy (Score:2)
It's timing or flushing... (Score:5, Informative)
Case 1: /?ABCDEFGH
[canterbury:~] gjh% telnet forgreatergood.org 80
Trying 64.202.167.129...
Connected to forgreatergood.org.
Escape character is '^]'.
GET / HTTP/1.0
HTTP/1.1 302 Moved Temporarily
Content-Length: 0
Location:
Connection closed by foreign host.
Case 2:
....(message text)
[canterbury:~] gjh% telnet forgreatergood.org 80
Trying 64.202.167.129...
Connected to forgreatergood.org.
Escape character is '^]'.
GET / HTTP/1.0
Host: forgreatergood.org
HTTP/1.1 302 Found
Date: Fri, 09 Dec 2005 01:15:53 GMT
Server: Apache/1.3.31 (Unix) mod_pointer/0.8 PHP/4.4.1
X-Redirected-By: mod_pointer - http://stderr.net/mod_pointer/ [stderr.net]
Location: http://www.wavepulse.net/forgreatergood [wavepulse.net]
Connection: close
Content-Type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1
The only difference was that with Case 2, I pasted in the request lines atomically, whereas in Case 1, I typed it line by line.
This is probably down to a brain dead content-switching device looking packet by packet instead of reassembling the stream. It is broken.
Greg
crawlers - bad for SEO (Score:3, Interesting)
to crawlers and people's sites were dropping from SE indexes like crazy
dunno, never used them, but since those conplaints by many I did not want to go with them...
Now it makes me wonder what googlebot, msnbot, yahoo and other members of the artificial gang see from these 302/404/no source sites
The real cause (Score:4, Insightful)
That's not it. That's not it by a mile. The real cause of this problem is that GoDaddy never bothered testing their site with anything other than two browsers. Hell, they probably only tested it with IE and the FF users just got lucky.
What the fsck is it with web developers that they never ever test their pages? And what is it with their managers that they don't insist on testing?
Re:Should be easy to troubleshoot (Score:3, Funny)
We are talking about Apple users here.
Re:Should be easy to troubleshoot (Score:2)
Re:Should be easy to troubleshoot (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Technical Investigation (Score:2)
No. Actually, all banging on something does is loosen the connections, causing further consternation.
Re:Technical Investigation (Score:2)
This is obviously a stereotypical troll, just as if I say that PC users are too busy sorting out their BSODs caused by their IRQ conflicts to notice that the malformed headers are coming from GoDaddy.
It's about as meaningful and relevant too.
The issue is not "Why are Mac users banging on about this?" but instead "Why do IE and Firefox not see the issues that Safari and Opera do?"
And what about Konquerer?
Re:Technical Investigation (Score:2)
That said, what do you expect? The ones who know how to use their computers don't hang out in the Apple forums. They read slashdot instead. So, I'm not the least bit surprised that it took over a week for the folks in the Apple forum to figure out what was going on. Everybody else just used another browser, or decided the site wasn't that important.
I use my iBook all the time. A larg
Re:baseless zealotry (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:baseless zealotry (Score:2)
Re:baseless zealotry (Score:3, Informative)
Safari is the #3 most popular web browser behind Internet Explorer and Firefox, according to whoever these guys are. It's also the #1 browser on the #2 desktop OS. To ignore Safari is to embrace Microsoft's monopoly. Most of us here on Slashdot aren't particularly happy with that idea.
Not quite (Score:3, Insightful)
Bitching about the service when you try to get a resolution might be like that, but the problem is more like hiring a woman for $6 an hour to answer the phone at your office, but she only ends up picking up the phone if the caller id ends in an odd number. No reason for it, she's just not doing her job.
Re:baseless zealotry (Score:2)
Safari nightlies (Score:2)
http://nightly.webkit.org/builds/ [webkit.org]
It's still Apple, but they've moved the CVS to a more public area. Aside from one person (Anders Carlsson) everyone working on Safari and WebKit are Apple employees.
Re:It's a pity. (Score:2)
If you have access to a Linux, *BSD, Solaris, or some such UNIX system, install KDE. Then give Konqueror a try. It's the quickest browser around. It's got amazingly fast responsiveness, and the minimum of bloat necessary for a full-blown web browser.
Re:It's a pity. (Score:2)
'Out-of-the-box', Opera has a lot more going for it than FireFox. I could see somebody thinking of it that way when describing Opera as more agile. Unfortunately, I don't think FF fans realize just how snazzy Opera's UI is and I don't think Opera fans realize just how extensible FF is. In your shoes, I wouldn't recommend taking too much offense to that comment.
Re:It's a pity. (Score:4, Funny)
An agile browser is one that can perform complex gymnastic manoevres while simultanously rendering web pages.
Re:The "zone" definition is usually to blame here (Score:2)
This isn't an option for a lot of people because cheap hosts and the free webspace that you get with ISP accounts etc don't usually allow you to configure them to respond to other hostnames.
Re:GAP.com (Score:5, Funny)
GoDaddy's on crack (Score:5, Informative)
30s of investigation on my park shows that their HTTP header parsing is fux0red. The biggest problem IMNSHO is that they are *not* looking for the end of the HTTP header, they are looking for the end of the FIRST PACKET.
This will break any HTTP client which uses multiple write()s to the socket while constructing its query, and either takes too long for Nagle, has the Nagle Algorithm turned off, or constructs a query which exceeds the MTU of any network between itself and GoDaddy.
GoDaddy is badly broken. The programmer who wrote the redirect code DID NOT read Stevens UNP or TCP/IP Illustrated Volume I.
The JRE "fix" is probably just a default state change of Nagle or the HTTP header contruction code in some fancy-pants object. (I'm a UNIX C hacker, not a Java guy).
Re:Does my site work? (Score:3, Funny)
Looking up www.justoneclubcard.com first
Looking up www.justoneclubcard.com
Making HTTP connection to www.justoneclubcard.com
Sending HTTP request.
HTTP request sent; waiting for response.
HTTP/1.1 302 Moved Temporarily
Data transfer complete
lynx: Start file could not be found or is not text/html or text/plain
Exiting...
sorry dude
oh wait didn't linu