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Admin
Real hackers use AOL to do their DOS's.
Admin
Ever since discovering tabbed browsing with Opera 5, I became a very patient Internet user. In some instances I keep a page loading for the entire 12 hour work week, while working in other tabs on other things. I see how the problem of endlessly looping requests could be much more common, regardless of whether you use an older AOL version or not.
Admin
Clearly there are terrorists living in Ohio! Alert DHS!
Admin
The design of favicon.ico is quite the WTF all by itself.
Admin
Admin
That was spectacular! Infinite redirects simply because of favicon. Who would've thought of that one.
Admin
Is there Something in the first log entry where the favicon is requested that explains the redirection? I can't see something there..
Admin
The real WTF is that the family in Ohio was using AOL, and an older version at that. They must be masochists.
Admin
It probably was redirecting to a custom error page.
Admin
You better believe it!
Admin
No, the real WTF is redirect pages in the first place. What's so wrong with a 404 error?
Admin
I'm not exactly an IIS expert, but I'm having difficulty in understanding why a single users browser stuck in an infinite redirect loop would be enough to cause the server to run out of memory in the first place.
Admin
But shouldn't that happen once? Unless the error page was missing, so redirecting to the custom error page, which was missing...
Admin
Thats AOL for ya, destroying websites one icon at a time.
Admin
What.. noone? Ok, I guess I'll have to say it.
The real WTF is AOL.
There.
Admin
66.77.93.50 ?
Admin
And when the browser got that page it then requested the favicon so it could display it with the page. Which is why the browser failed to notice the loop. Only give custom error pages for real pages not the furniture.
Admin
Its the millions of sessions that killed it.
Admin
Admin
There. Fixed that for you.
Admin
It can be a bit hard to spot, but the key point is the number 302, which is the HTTP/1.x status code "302 Found" (originally "302 Moved Temporarily") - web servers tend to return that code (instead of the proper 303 or 307) when processing a dynamic redirect.
Admin
Admin
It's not clear to me if there were 2 million active connections to SQL Server or just 2 million sessions on the web app, but anyway, if it's to SQL Server, two words: CONNECTION POOL.
Admin
Every so often, Bob B. observed that his company's e-commerce site would crash-hard.
It's always fun when em dashes get turned into plain old hyphens.
Admin
I hate those little favicon's! I've begun adding them to most of my clients' sites to remove the clutter from the log files showing file not found when the browser requested it.
Admin
I don't really think it's the answer, Not Dorothy. The browser doesn't have to display that page, so there's no need to download the favicon. Moreover, the article only mentions favicon ONCE (at the very beginning of the endless loop). So where is that freaking loop ? Someone mentioned the 302 (Found), but that's it, I don't really get it.
Admin
Admin
$ ls -l favicon.ico ls: favicon.ico: No such file or directory $ touch favicon.ico $ ls -l favicon.ico -rw-r--r-- 1 dpm dpm 0 Feb 7 08:49 favicon.ico $
Problem solved!
Admin
Imagine the gl_tail flow...
[image]Admin
The real fix would have been to somehow tweak the error page to make any AOL browser crash and never come back alive.
CAPTCHA : ingenium
Admin
Wait... when did Ohio get internet?
Admin
Glad to see the CAPTCHA is unique! That is what it was for my first post above.
Now it is different...hmm, I wonder how many options there are?
CAPTCHA: vereor
Admin
What is an "Ohio"?
Admin
Admin
You have a point; after all, why would the browser need to display an error page if it can't find a favicon it's trying to update for a bookmark? I imagine the explanation is there that there was an AOL browser that actually behaved this way, which I can buy AOL doing, or that we're looking at one of those cases where Alex "enhances" the story to the point where it doesn't make sense anymore.
Admin
I believe it means "Hello" in Japanese.
Admin
Admin
I call shenanigans. Management would have just told the developer to schedule a task that restarts the 2 services every night. At the places where I've worked, any bug that has a workaround never gets fixed; the workaround just gets added to the user manual!
Admin
The goggles! They do nothing!
Seriously, these colors are awful. How long are you going to subject us to these?
Admin
Wow, your job suddenly got a lot worse ;)
Admin
It's really very simple.
The browser requests the resource at foo.com/favicon.ico. The server responds with a 302 response, which means "That thing you asked for is temporarily over here -> /error.aspx". The new URL is for a custom error page, but THE BROWSER DOESN'T KNOW THAT, because the server hasn't told it there's an error. It has just told it that the resource has moved. So the browser requests foo.com/error.aspx as the URL of the favicon instead, like it has been told. The server opens a new session and fails, and issues another 302 redirect saying "That thing you asked for is temporarily over here -> /access?action=forward&uri=%2Ferror.aspx" Again, the browser doesn't know that's an error page, so it dutifully follows the instructions the server has given it. And by so doing, another session is created, and the infinite loop begins.
The only fault of the browser is that arguably, it should limit the number of successive 302 redirects it will follow for a given resource being requested, and eventually give up. However, the standard (RFC1945) doesn't say anything about such a limit being required, or even desirable.
So although everybody loves to hate on AOL, in this case the fault is absolutely entirely with the server and application.
I've seen similar things myself. I've browsed to web sites that try to start a session, then fail because I have cookies disabled by default, so they redirect me back to the page to start a session, and so on forever. I tend to leave pages like that open in another tab for a few hours in the hope that the fucktards running the site will notice the problem.
Admin
Admin
Admin
Ah ASP. PHP or mod_rewrite would automatically kill these loops after a set number of redirects.
Admin
No offense to the original poster, but what the smeg is so awesome about this post that it got bumped up to almighty Featured status?
Admin
I agree. And thats my problem with the current WTF, the solution is another WTF!, the problem is just rub under the carpet with a touch favicon.ico, but still here, waiting to happend again.
Admin
I can just imagine that happening at my workplace and it not being fixed for months.. Its always the small things that cause the big problems.
Admin
Admin
66.77.93.50 doesn't resolve to a DNS entry. What's really going on here?
Admin