A strange problem with FireFox

[JohnnyR]

Hiya guys, something strange's happening. Take this url for instance and open it in IE. Everything works fine, but when u try to open it in FF a prompt comes up asking to pick which software to use to visualize the file, or if I wanted to save it.

This doesn't happen for all the sites on that domain - first I thought it had something to do with htaccess but that's not the case - I have the same problem if i delete htaccess entirely.

Any clue as to why this is happening, anybody?
Thanks for the hand

[Cleo]

It wants to set a cookie.

[Useless]

It's fine here in FF2.0

[JohnnyR]

Uhmm... I'm a bit lost cuz I don't know much about cookies. Why could that be?
Here's a mirror of the site which works fine. Does this one also try to set a cookie for you cleo? As a matter a fact, do any of these?

I also downloaded a copy of the page from the server and I'm going trough the source code and I don't see anything fishy... not that I know what I'm looking for. How are cookies being set? I'd assume there needs to be some code inside the html, right?

[JohnnyR]

Oh and Cleo, let it set the cookie and then have a look see if u can figure out what it actually does, would u?

& thanks UW

[cd34]

Your mirror sets a phpsessionid cookie, almost like session_start() is called early on. However, that isn't consistent. Its like out of every few that try to set a cookie, some do, some redirect to an index page which was quite broken. Regrettably I didn't look closely at the source code, and I can't get that page to show up again, but, it was a very blank page, with a search box -- until I reread your thread, I thought it was a simple hub listing.

Gut feeling is that you have something suspect on the page and it randomly tries to redirect. because it popped that one page once, and I was declining the cookies, I didn't think much about it, but, on the one attempt, it did try to set multiple cookies from your site -- each of which was a php session id. Firefox 3 here -- when the cookie was accepted, it seemed to make no difference in the display of the pages. The hub page that displayed is probably of some concern.

If you aren't intentionally setting the session, you might want to see if any of your pages have been modified recently with any odd php code that contains an eval(base64_decode('ab23bab5b blah blah')).

[Useless]

I went downstairs, refilled my coffee, came back and clicked the link again and got this.
I refreshed and got the free site again. When I check cookie information, it's a PHPSESSID cookie which expires at the end of the session.

[cd34]

That is the same page I got once.

[JohnnyR]

cd and UW, I was fucking around with htaccess and that is why you got those strange errors - I installed this script on the domain called phpLD which comes with a few htaccess rules to be added and I tried to modify those see if they cause the problem.

I deleted htaccess entirely now... can u re-check? I still got the same problem from the start. And no, I'm not intentionally trying to set any cookie...

Also can u see if there are any similar problems with any of these links? I randomly tried a few and everything seems ok with those... which is why this is stranger.

[justbondage]

Looks fine for me in FF3

[Cleo]

All seems fine now

[JohnnyR]

I still have the "open with / save" problem...
However, I deleted htaccess entirely now... so maybe that's why there's no cookie anymore? Here were it's contents:

#OLD STUFF

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://(www\.)?pleasuredelivery\.com/ [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://(www\.)?girlslovesquirting\.com/ [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://(www\.)?greenguyandjim\.com/ [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$
RewriteRule \.(jpe?g|gif|png)$ - [F]

ErrorDocument 400 /error.html
ErrorDocument 401 /error.html
ErrorDocument 403 /error.html
ErrorDocument 404 /error.html
ErrorDocument 500 /error.html

#################################################
## PHPLD Apache Server Settings ##
#################################################

# Prevent .htaccess and .htpasswd files from being viewed by web clients
<Files "^\.ht">
Order allow,deny
Deny from all
</Files>

# Protect files
<Files ~ "^(.*)\.(inc|inc\.php|tpl|sql)$">
Order deny,allow
Deny from all
</Files>

# Protect directories
<Files ~ "^(backup|files|images|include|lang|libs(/.+)?|temp(/.+)?|templates(/.+)?|javascripts(/.+)?)$">
Order deny,allow
Deny from all
</Files>

# Disable directory browsing
Options -Indexes

# Follow symbolic links in this directory
Options +FollowSymLinks

# Override PHP settings that cannot be changed at runtime
# (If your server supports PHP settings via htaccess you can comment following two lines off)
# php_value register_globals 0
# php_value session.auto_start 0

# Customized error messages
# ( If you are running in a subfolder please add it, example: "directory/index.php?httpstatus=404" )
#ErrorDocument 404 index.php?httpstatus=404

# Set the default handler
DirectoryIndex index.php

# URL rewrite rules
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On


#Make sure RewriteBase points to the directory where you installed phpLD.
#Example: "/phpld" if your installation is in a "phpld" subdirectory.

#RewriteBase /

##Latest Links Rewrite
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-l
RewriteRule ^latest-links\.htm[l]?$ index.php?list=latest [QSA,NC,L]

##Top Hits Rewrite
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-l
RewriteRule ^top-hits\.htm[l]?$ index.php?list=top [QSA,NC,L]

##Latest Articles Rewrite
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-l
RewriteRule ^latest-articles\.htm[l]?$ index.php?list=latestarticles [QSA,NC,L]

##Details Link Page Rewrite
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-l
RewriteRule (.*)detail/link-(.*)\.htm[l]?$ detail.php [QSA,NC]

##Article Page Rewrite
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-l
RewriteRule (.*)articles/article-(.*)\.htm[l]?$ article.php [QSA,NC]

##Author Page Rewrite
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-l
RewriteRule (.*)authors/author-(.*)\.htm[l]?$ author.php [QSA,NC]

##Pagination Rewrite
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-l
RewriteRule (.*)page-[0-9]+\.html$ index.php [QSA,NC,L]

##Pages redirect
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !page-[0-9]+\.html?$
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-l
RewriteRule ^(.+)\.html$ page.php?name=$1 [NC,QSA,L]

##Category redirect
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-l
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php [QSA,L]
</IfModule>

Doesn't look like anything trying to set a cookie to me...

[cd34]

if

# php_value session.auto_start 0

was set on your server to default to 1, it would automatically send a cookie. Since I am not seeing that behavior on every pageload, and it was a phpsession cookie, and I think your linksoftware MIGHT set a cookie, I think there must be a 404 somewhere -- perhaps even just favicon.ico which would be grabbed by your link script.

Since your rule sends every non existent file request to your link script, if any css, favicon.ico, image, background, etc is missing, you'll get 1 hit to your link directory, and, if the link directory sets a cookie, you're going to set a cookie when someone loads that page.

I am getting a straight 404 when I try to view your favicon.ico, which is possibly what Firefox triggered when it visited the site which prompted the cookie.

As for the save file as, take a look at firebug, its a firefox extension, or liveheaders. I would suspect that you are getting a Content-type: something that is different than what I'm seeing. If it is text/html, then, you have something else wrong somewhere.

[JohnnyR]

ok I uploaded a favicon and un-commented that line in htaccess.

any more cookies?

[ExLust]

Works clean here.

[digifan]

Works fine at this end, Firefox 2.0.0.16 mac.

[raven1083]

I have been using Fire fox 3 and it work s well with my browser.

[bivis]

It works fine with FF v.3 and with Opera v.9 also.

[JohnnyR]

Thanks guys, you've been very helpful. It's all sorted out now from what I can see

thanks again