Re: Release rules

From: David J Woolley <djw@dont-contact.us>
Date: Wed, 24 Feb 1999 15:00:01 +0000

> http://docs.hp.com/dynaweb/hpux11/hpuxen1a/rvl2en1a/@Generic__BookTextView/163060;td=2;hf=0

These are very dynamic. They are so dynamic that the server gives a
500 status response without identifying itself if you ask for the
headers to try to work out what it is doing. The ;s also suggest
that this is not a static URL. It doesn't have a ? parameter marker,
but that's no bar to its being dynamic. In fact I've created whole
sites that are purely dynamic. "dyanweb" is rather a good clue, as
well.

These are the headers you get back for a GET. I'm not sure that they
meet even the minimum requirements of the HTTP protocol - I'd expect
at least a Date header, but maybe that is optional for servers with
no good time.

HTTP/1.0 200 OK
Content-type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1

To be cacheable they would need Last-Modified-Date, or ETAG or Cache-
Control headers (not sure if the last is sufficient without others).

Status 500 is server broken. The correct response for refusing HEAD
would be 405, with additional information, and assuming servers are
allowed to refuse HEAD for a valid resource.

The lack of Date and Server headers makes me think that either there
is no conventional web server here at all, or they are using non
parsed headers lazily, or wrongly.

-- 
David Woolley - Office: David Woolley <djw@bts.co.uk>
BTS             Home: <david@djwhome.demon.co.uk>
Wallington      TQ 2887 6421
England         51  21' 44" N,  00  09' 01" W (WGS 84)
Received on Wed Feb 24 1999 - 08:35:36 MST

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