Getting garbage when viewing text files

[wanderer]

Hi folks, hopefully someone knows what's happening with my
setup and how I can work around it. Without Promomitron, if I
click on a link to a text file, it comes up in the browser
and I can view it fine. When Proxomitron enabled, when I
click on the same link, a dialog pops up asking whether I
want to Open or Save the file -- no matter which I choose,
the data that's downloaded is just a bunch of jibberish.

Thanks for any help,
W


 

[Scott Lemmon]

Might help if you mentioned what link you were talking about

 

[wanderer]

Happens on a lot of them, but one that comes to mind
first is if you're reading an individual post on Google
Groups and click on "Original Format" in the upper
right hand corner. Proxomitron off, the text shows up
in the browser. Proxomitron on, I'm asked if I want to
Open or Save it, and it just returns a file filled with
gibberish.


 

[Jor]

Are you using any header filter that starts with 'Content-Type:' ?
If so, it may be set to incorrectly replace certain MIME types.

 

[wanderer]

Tx for the hint. I unchecked "Accept-encoding: Allow webpage encoding (out)"
(which is checked by default) and it works fine now. When I get some free time I'll try to take a look at what's going on to cause that result.

W


 

[Jor]

Certain webservers respond strange to Prox's default string (gzip, deflate).

You could try disabling the filter completely and let your browser deal with encoding (the method I use), or try changing it to this string: 'deflate, gzip, x-gzip, identity, *' (I found this works on (nearly) all websites).

By the way, could you give me the URL this happens on? I'd like to check exactly how that server is configured to produce this error

 

[wanderer]

Just check out any post archived on Google Groups (http://groups.google.com/)
and click on the "Original Format" link in the upper right corner of the post.
Note that the "Original Format" link is only present when you're looking at
an individual post, not if you're viewing an entire thread.

Try http://tinyurl.com/nm7 and click the "Original Format" link, I just
went there to make sure I get the behavior I described.




 

[Scott Lemmon]

What browser are you using?  My guess is it's probably an older one that doesn't support gzip encoding. If that's the case, disabling the header is the best solution.  Proxomitron only decodes pages it filters - the google example is plain-text so is sent as-is. Same thing would happen if you bypassed the web filters on a gziped page.

 

[wanderer]

I'm using IE6 with all the latest updates on Win2K.

 

[Jor]

I doubt it's due to the browser. I have found servers before (usually IIS) that could not handle the gzip, deflate string, using deflate, gzip, x-gzip, identity, * or just letting the browser handle this header works in all cases.

In my opinion it would be best if this filter was removed from the Proxomitron default filterset: browsers that support encoding/compression already report a valid header string, and browsers that do not can't deal with gzip'd pages anyway.

 

[sidki3003]

I'm currently really interested in dealing with malconfigured servers.
As you know it's more than just the mime types ...
If you remember some, could you post or PM them?

TIA, sidki

 

[Jor]

Just look for any server which only accepts chunked. While not actually an encoding, it does result in garbage when Prox does not return an asterisk anywhere in it's A-E header.

Most Sun Cobalt boxen have this behaviour.

 

[sidki3003]

Thanks