Ignore MisbehavingServers rather than fail with an error

[Ryan Schmidt]

On Apr 8, 2012, at 07:02, Arno Hautala wrote:

> I think the proxy issue is if there is an error on the user's end
> (misconfigured proxy, unacknowledged hotel wireless terms, etc.) this
> change could lead to port downloading from multiple sources and
> reporting that each is misbehaving. The correct fix in this case is on
> the user.
> 
> Downloading multiple times is a waste, but shouldn't be too heavy.

> It's not like this would download the full distfile and the HTML error
> page every time.

Right, it's just an HTML page from the proxy server.

> You could always cache the checksum for the previous
> fetch and then report to the user that it may be a misbehaving server
> / bad proxy if subsequent fetches match. Though I can see how a bad
> proxy wouldn't necessarily deliver the exact same payload every time.

An interesting idea, but I agree we perhaps shouldn't rely on that.

> In my opinion, grabbing an error page from every mirror server before
> reporting a misbehaving server isn't an unacceptable option.

In this scenario the error page / search page is always being downloaded from the proxy server, not from the individual mirror servers MacPorts actually wants to download from; it is because of this hypothetical proxy server that MacPorts cannot actually reach the servers it wants to reach.

So the only burden imposed by my change is making the proxy server deliver a few extra copies of an HTML page. I don't feel too badly about that, especially since we don't like these proxy servers since the whole notion of mangling the DNS violates the RFC.