general/4959: users browsers start to download pages from our server but only get part of the page

[Anne Petrie <an...@3ws.com>]

>Number:         4959
>Category:       general
>Synopsis:       users browsers start to download pages from our server but only get part of the page
>Confidential:   no
>Severity:       serious
>Priority:       medium
>Responsible:    apache
>State:          open
>Class:          sw-bug
>Submitter-Id:   apache
>Arrival-Date:   Fri Sep  3 17:10:00 PDT 1999
>Last-Modified:
>Originator:     anne@3ws.com
>Organization:
apache
>Release:        1.3.9 (& 1.3.6)
>Environment:
IRIX64 6.5 04151556 IP27  compiled with SGI compiler ver 7.3
Compiled-in modules:
  http_core.c
  mod_env.c
  mod_log_config.c
  mod_mime.c
  mod_status.c
  mod_autoindex.c
  mod_dir.c
  mod_cgi.c
  mod_imap.c
  mod_alias.c
  mod_rewrite.c
  mod_access.c
  mod_auth.c
  mod_auth_db.c
  mod_proxy.c
  mod_setenvif.c
>Description:
Some of our authenticated users are experiencing a problem that I 
have not been able to replicate.  The problem is this:  A user correctly 
types in his username and password.  His browser then successfully 
displays the password protected index.html page.  (note: this page is 
just plain vanilla html...no javascript, no frames etc.)  Then if he 
attempts to follow any link from that index.html page his browser will 
start to download and display the requested page but never it finishes.  
His browser will just hang infinitely.  (These pages are also just plain 
vanilla html.)  According to the access logs the requests for files on 
the page show up as successful (200) requests.  However it seems that 
the browser only requests some of the files on the page before it hangs, 
so, I don't see requests in the access log for all the files that make up the page.
 While I have not been able to replicate this problem, I have users running 
various os/browser combinations  that have hit this problem:  IE5/win95, IE4/win98, Net4.5/win98,
Net4/win95.  After talking with more people affected by this problem I have found that
it is not just affecting our password protected area. It is affecting non-protected 
pages as well.  Out of over 40 users who are having this problem, all but one 
are using 56K modems.  They say that they are not having this problem with other
sites, but only ours. 
>How-To-Repeat:
Despite 3 weeks of trying, I have not been able to repeat this problem.  
>Fix:
I think that we are just going to try to go back to older versions of Apache 
until our users stop reporting the problem. (We weren't having this problem until 1.3.6...then we upgraded to 1.3.9 hoping 
to solve this problem) 
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