Please provide a way to prevent If-Range header use

[Soren Hansen]

SRU justification: See bug 1162876.

Original report follows:

I'm stuck behind a proxy that seems to filter the if-range header from requests from apt-cacher-ng.

This means that when apt-cacher-ng tries to refresh a volatile file by passing "If-Range: <last known modification time" and "Range: bytes=<last byte of the file>", all the remote server ever sees is the request for the last byte. apt-cacher-ng gets a HTTP 206 response back and concludes that the file hasn't changed.

This causes lots of grief because the Release file isn't updated, so the trust path from Release.gpg -> Release -> Packages.bz2 -> checksums of packages is busted.

I see this comment in apt-0.8.16~exp12ubuntu8/apt-pkg/acquire-item.cc:

      // File was already in place. It needs to be re-downloaded/verified
      // because Release might have changed, we do give it a differnt
      // name than DestFile because otherwise the http method will
      // send If-Range requests and there are too many broken servers
      // out there that do not understand them

..suggesting that I'm far from alone with this problem.

[Eduard Bloch (edi-gmx)]

Maybe not so far as you think, it's the first report of such kind (in almost five years).

IMHO not supporting If-Range correctly is an utterly stupid idea. It's like replacing red light bulbs with green ones in traffic lights and say: hey, it's good enough, it will be correct most of the time.

I will provide that option ASAP.

[Soren Hansen (soren)]

16. apr. 2012 18.25 skrev Eduard Bloch <email address hidden>:
> Maybe not so far as you think, it's the first report of such kind (in
> almost five years).

Wow.

> IMHO not supporting If-Range correctly is an utterly stupid idea.

It is. I'm in the process of reporting the bug to the proxy vendor,
but it's a bit of a convoluted process.

> I will provide that option ASAP.

*Fantastic*. Thank you!

--
Soren Hansen             | http://linux2go.dk/
Senior Software Engineer | http://www.cisco.com/
Ubuntu Developer         | http://www.ubuntu.com/
OpenStack Developer      | http://www.openstack.org/

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package apt-cacher-ng - 0.7.4-1ubuntu1

---------------
apt-cacher-ng (0.7.4-1ubuntu1) quantal; urgency=low

  * Merge from Debian unstable. Remaining changes:
    - debian/apt-cacher-ng.logrotate:
      Comment out the "su" lines as this requires logrotate 3.8.1 which isn't
      in Ubuntu yet.
    - drop conflict on logrotate < 3.8.1

apt-cacher-ng (0.7.4-1) unstable; urgency=medium

  * New upstream release
    + prevents endless looping in certain situations (LP: #999915)
    + more tolerance to unstable connections and behavior fix for conflicting
      downloads in maintenance mode (closes: #672801)
  * added a bug-script to present some instructions

apt-cacher-ng (0.7.3-1) unstable; urgency=low

  * New upstream release
    + Fixes FTBFS (missing unistd.h include, closes: #667100)
    + option to disable Range/If-Range for volatile files (LP: #983128)
    + Fixes storage of HTTP header data in cached files under certain
      circumstances (now really closes: #644959)
  * Conflict with older logrotate not understanding "su" (closes: #662760)
  * Process user/group is configurable via default file now (closes: #668421)
 -- Julian Taylor <email address hidden> Fri, 25 May 2012 23:41:35 +0200

[Steve Langasek (vorlon)]

Hello Soren, or anyone else affected,

Accepted apt-cacher-ng into precise-proposed. The package will build now and be available at http://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/apt-cacher-ng/0.7.2-1ubuntu2 in a few hours, and then in the -proposed repository.

Please help us by testing this new package. See https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Testing/EnableProposed for documentation how to enable and use -proposed. Your feedback will aid us getting this update out to other Ubuntu users.

If this package fixes the bug for you, please add a comment to this bug, mentioning the version of the package you tested, and change the tag from verification-needed to verification-done. If it does not fix the bug for you, please add a comment stating that, and change the tag to verification-failed. In either case, details of your testing will help us make a better decision.

Further information regarding the verification process can be found at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/QATeam/PerformingSRUVerification . Thank you in advance!

[Colin Watson (cjwatson)]

The verification of this Stable Release Update has completed successfully and the package has now been released to -updates. Subsequently, the Ubuntu Stable Release Updates Team is being unsubscribed and will not receive messages about this bug report. In the event that you encounter a regression using the package from -updates please report a new bug using ubuntu-bug and tag the bug report regression-update so we can easily find any regresssions.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package apt-cacher-ng - 0.7.2-1ubuntu2

---------------
apt-cacher-ng (0.7.2-1ubuntu2) precise; urgency=low

   [ Eduard Bloch ]
   * Option to disable Range/If-Range for volatile files (LP: #983128)
   * Fixes storage of HTTP header data in cached files under certain
         circumstances (now really closes: #644959) (LP: #1162876)
 -- Chris J Arges <email address hidden> Tue, 09 Apr 2013 00:21:04 +0100