While trying to follow a discussion involving a deeply nested debian.org sub-directory, I attempted to find the purpose of that sub-directory by following a chain of links titled "Parent Directory".

That led to http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ whose first link is to "http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/README" [NOTE BENE quotation marks].

That file (in part) reads:

Unstable, or sid. Access this release through dists/unstable. The
current development snapshot is named sid. Untested candidate
packages for future releases.

Older releases of Debian are at http://archive.debian.org/debian-archive

--- Other directories:

I pointed my browser to "http://archive.debian.org/debian-archive" and got:

Not Found

The requested URL was not found on this server.
Apache Server at archive.debian.org Port 80

Suspecting a bad URL I went back to "http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/"
whose HTML reads in part:

<h2>Old Releases</h2>

<p>Older releases of Debian are at
<a href="http://archive.debian.org/debian-archive/">http://archive.debian.org/debian-archive</a>

<a href="https://www.debian.org/distrib/archive">More information</a>

and chose the link titled "README.html". It displayed *properly*.

I went back to the link triggering the "404 error" and added a trailing
"/" to the URL. It *then* displayed properly.

Is this a typo or a server problem?
[ understand "STRANGENESS" in my Subject: line? ;]

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On Oct 17, 2024, Richard Owlett wrote:

While trying to follow a discussion involving a deeply nested debian.org sub-directory, I attempted to find the purpose of that sub-directory by following a chain of links titled "Parent Directory".

That led to http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ whose first link is to "http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/README" [NOTE BENE quotation marks].

[...]

I pointed my browser to "http://archive.debian.org/debian-archive" and
got:

I went back to the link triggering the "404 error" and added a trailing "/" to the URL. It *then* displayed properly.

Is this a typo or a server problem?
[ understand "STRANGENESS" in my Subject: line? ;]

Both, potentially.

The server SHOULD give you the directory with or without the trailing
slash, but it seems it's configured such that if you don't have the
trailing slash on the directory, it treats it as a file (which isn't
there).

I wonder if apache is doing some kind of directory-level virtualization,
where it only "exists" if you have the trailing slash on the end (I
don't know enough of the internals of apache2 to say one way or the
other; but I have run into this with certain configurations of various
FTP / SFTP implementations in "commercial" products for business communication).

--
|_|O|_|
|_|_|O| Github: https://github.com/dpurgert
|O|O|O| PGP: DDAB 23FB 19FA 7D85 1CC1 E067 6D65 70E5 4CE7 2860

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--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Us

On Thu, Oct 17, 2024 at 09:39:40AM -0400, Dan Purgert wrote:

On Oct 17, 2024, Richard Owlett wrote:

While trying to follow a discussion involving a deeply nested debian.org sub-directory, I attempted to find the purpose of that sub-directory by following a chain of links titled "Parent Directory".

That led to http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ whose first link is to "http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/README" [NOTE BENE quotation marks].

[...]

I pointed my browser to "http://archive.debian.org/debian-archive" and
got:

I went back to the link triggering the "404 error" and added a trailing "/" to the URL. It *then* displayed properly.

Is this a typo or a server problem?
[ understand "STRANGENESS" in my Subject: line? ;]

Both, potentially.

The server SHOULD give you the directory with or without the trailing
slash, but it seems it's configured such that if you don't have the
trailing slash on the directory, it treats it as a file (which isn't
there).

I wonder if apache is doing some kind of directory-level virtualization, where it only "exists" if you have the trailing slash on the end (I
don't know enough of the internals of apache2 to say one way or the
other; but I have run into this with certain configurations of various
FTP / SFTP implementations in "commercial" products for business communication).

Strictly speaking, https//server.domain/foo and https//server.domain/foo/
are two different URLs which may point to different resources. For directories (whatever that means) it is more or less customary to silently append the trailing slash. But see Apache's mod_dir docs [1] to get an impression of
the rabbit's hole depth.

But yes, in this case I'd venture the guess that the server admin unintentionally
missed to configure this in the "usual" way.

Cheers
[1] https://httpd.apache.org/docs/trunk/mod/mod_dir.html
--
t

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--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On 10/17/2024 08:39 AM, Dan Purgert wrote:

On Oct 17, 2024, Richard Owlett wrote:

While trying to follow a discussion involving a deeply nested debian.org
sub-directory, I attempted to find the purpose of that sub-directory by
following a chain of links titled "Parent Directory".

That led to http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ whose first link is to
"http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/README" [NOTE BENE quotation marks].

[...]

Though I understand why Dan clipped [...], it was there for a reason.
I date back to CPUs with 12AX7s and spent three decades in component
level (engineering support)/(QA/QC)/(end user support).

I pointed my browser to "http://archive.debian.org/debian-archive" and
got:

I went back to the link triggering the "404 error" and added a trailing "/" >> to the URL. It *then* displayed properly.

Is this a typo or a server problem?
[ understand "STRANGENESS" in my Subject: line? ;]

Both, potentially.

'Twas afraid of that ;{

The server SHOULD give you the directory with or without the trailing
slash, but it seems it's configured such that if you don't have the
trailing slash on the directory, it treats it as a file (which isn't
there).

I wonder if apache is doing some kind of directory-level virtualization, where it only "exists" if you have the trailing slash on the end (I
don't know enough of the internals of apache2 to say one way or the
other; but I have run into this with certain configurations of various
FTP / SFTP implementations in "commercial" products for business communication).

The *clipped* portion of my post included at least one URL with no
trailing "/" which worked properly.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

Hi,

On Thu, Oct 17, 2024 at 09:10:35AM -0500, Richard Owlett wrote:

On 10/17/2024 08:39 AM, Dan Purgert wrote:

I wonder if apache is doing some kind of directory-level
virtualization, where it only "exists" if you have the trailing
slash on the end (I don't know enough of the internals of apache2 to
say one way or the other; but I have run into this with certain configurations of various FTP / SFTP implementations in "commercial" products for business communication).

The *clipped* portion of my post included at least one URL with no
trailing "/" which worked properly.

Two different URLs on the same host can be configured to work completely differently, and also URLs don't have to bear any resemblance to the
filesystem underneath (or any filesystem at all).

So for example just because requesting http://example.com/foo/ does one
thing implies nothing about what requesting http://example.com/bar will
do. Either, both or neither of them may relate to actual files and
directories on a filesystem somewhere, or perhaps they are generated dynamically from some database. There is no way to tell without being
familiar with the backend.

In general it is not desirable for the presence or lack of a trailing
'/' on something that's meant to be a representation of a container
(like a directory/folder) to act differently, so I'd say this case is a
minor misconfiguration.

That is, in general, if http://example.com/foo/ is expected to show some
things that are logically "inside" /foo, then it is considered poor user experience for http://example.com/foo to not do the same.

Thanks,
Andy

--
https://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On Oct 17, 2024, Richard Owlett wrote:

On 10/17/2024 08:39 AM, Dan Purgert wrote:

On Oct 17, 2024, Richard Owlett wrote:

While trying to follow a discussion involving a deeply nested debian.org sub-directory, I attempted to find the purpose of that sub-directory by following a chain of links titled "Parent Directory".

That led to http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ whose first link is to "http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/README" [NOTE BENE quotation marks].

[...]

Though I understand why Dan clipped [...], it was there for a reason.
I date back to CPUs with 12AX7s and spent three decades in component level (engineering support)/(QA/QC)/(end user support).

I pointed my browser to "http://archive.debian.org/debian-archive" and got:

I went back to the link triggering the "404 error" and added a trailing "/"
to the URL. It *then* displayed properly.

Is this a typo or a server problem?
[ understand "STRANGENESS" in my Subject: line? ;]

Both, potentially.

'Twas afraid of that ;{

The server SHOULD give you the directory with or without the trailing slash, but it seems it's configured such that if you don't have the trailing slash on the directory, it treats it as a file (which isn't there).

I wonder if apache is doing some kind of directory-level virtualization, where it only "exists" if you have the trailing slash on the end (I
don't know enough of the internals of apache2 to say one way or the
other; but I have run into this with certain configurations of various
FTP / SFTP implementations in "commercial" products for business communication).

The *clipped* portion of my post included at least one URL with no
trailing "/" which worked properly.

If it did, then you didn't clearly indicate as such. As I read the
email, the given story was:

"README" indicated the URL[1] that responded with a 404. I looked at
another reference that was URL[2], which included a trailing slash
that happened to work. Is this a typo or a server-side problem?


To which my answer was "both, potentially"; meaning either

(A) There was an inadvertent typo somewhere in the mix:
- you, or
- author of README

(B) There is a configuration setting in this particular web-server
that is causing it to *NOT* treat "dirname" as a valid for a
directory that otherwise exists.



Now, re-reading; I see I inadvertently cut out the sentence that I tried
both URL[1] and URL[2] within seconds of one another, lending weight to
the idea that server configuration for archive.debian.org was the
underlying cause.


"Both, potentially.

I just tested archive.debian.org/debian-archive (without slash)
and then immediately tried archive.debian.org/debian-archive/
(with slash) and got the same result.

The server SHOULD [...] "

Makes a world of difference, I think. One of these days I'll either get
my greymatter to slow down, or my fingers to speed up. :)


[1]"http://archive.debian.org/debian-archive"
[2]"http://archive.debian.org/debian-archive/"

--
|_|O|_|
|_|_|O| Github: https://github.com/dpurgert
|O|O|O| PGP: DDAB 23FB 19FA 7D85 1CC1 E067 6D65 70E5 4CE7 2860

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--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Us

On Thu 17 Oct 2024 at 07:35:55 (-0500), Richard Owlett wrote:

While trying to follow a discussion involving a deeply nested
debian.org sub-directory, I attempted to find the purpose of that sub-directory by following a chain of links titled "Parent Directory".

That led to http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ whose first link is to "http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/README" [NOTE BENE quotation marks].

That file (in part) reads:

Unstable, or sid. Access this release through dists/unstable. The
current development snapshot is named sid. Untested candidate
packages for future releases.

Older releases of Debian are at http://archive.debian.org/debian-archive

--- Other directories:

I pointed my browser to "http://archive.debian.org/debian-archive" and got:

Not Found

The requested URL was not found on this server.
Apache Server at archive.debian.org Port 80

Suspecting a bad URL I went back to "http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/"
whose HTML reads in part:

<h2>Old Releases</h2>

<p>Older releases of Debian are at
<a href="http://archive.debian.org/debian-archive/">http://archive.debian.org/debian-archive</a>

<a href="https://www.debian.org/distrib/archive">More information</a>

and chose the link titled "README.html". It displayed *properly*.

I went back to the link triggering the "404 error" and added a
trailing "/" to the URL. It *then* displayed properly.

Is this a typo or a server problem?
[ understand "STRANGENESS" in my Subject: line? ;]

There seems to be quite a thicket of cross-links in the
archive. If you click on debian/ in the listing at http://archive.debian.org/debian-archive/, you get taken to http://archive.debian.org/debian-archive/debian/, which
appears to be the same as http://archive.debian.org/debian/,
and the latter is what I bookmarked years ago (maybe on the
demise of http://archive.debian.net/, who knows).

http://archive.debian.org/debian/ has frequently come up in
discussions on this list. I find it a much simpler tree to
navigate around, as long as you remember one thing: Until the
pool was created, everything lay under dists/; nowadays,
packages are under pool/, and everything else remains under dists/.
I've not checked to see whether there's a top-level-ish link
to this tree.

Cheers,
David.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

Later in this thread Tomas references "Apache HTTP Server
Documentation"[1] which explicitly states "Directories require a
trailing slash...".

Therefore http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/README should *NOT* read
"Older releases of Debian are at http://archive.debian.org/debian-archive" *BUT* should read
"Older releases of Debian are at
http://archive.debian.org/debian-archive/ ."

[1] https://httpd.apache.org/docs/trunk/mod/mod_dir.html


On 10/17/2024 07:35 AM, Richard Owlett wrote:

While trying to follow a discussion involving a deeply nested debian.org sub-directory, I attempted to find the purpose of that sub-directory by following a chain of links titled "Parent Directory".

That led to http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ whose first link is to "http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/README" [NOTE BENE quotation marks].

That file (in part) reads:

Unstable, or sid.  Access this release through dists/unstable.  The
current development snapshot is named sid.  Untested candidate
packages for future releases.

Older releases of Debian are at http://archive.debian.org/debian-archive

--- Other directories:

I pointed my browser to "http://archive.debian.org/debian-archive" and got:

Not Found

The requested URL was not found on this server.
Apache Server at archive.debian.org Port 80

Suspecting a bad URL I went back to "http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/"
whose HTML reads in part:

<h2>Old Releases</h2>

<p>Older releases of Debian are at
<a
href="http://archive.debian.org/debian-archive/">http://archive.debian.org/debian-archive</a>

<br>
<a href="https://www.debian.org/distrib/archive">More information</a>
</p>

and chose the link titled "README.html". It displayed *properly*.

I went back to the link triggering the "404 error" and added a trailing
"/" to the URL. It *then* displayed properly.

Is this a typo or a server problem?
[ understand "STRANGENESS" in my Subject: line? ;]

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On Sat, Oct 19, 2024 at 05:26:02AM -0500, Richard Owlett wrote:

Later in this thread Tomas references "Apache HTTP Server Documentation"[1] which explicitly states "Directories require a trailing slash...".

Therefore http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/README should *NOT* read
"Older releases of Debian are at http://archive.debian.org/debian-archive" *BUT* should read
"Older releases of Debian are at http://archive.debian.org/debian-archive/
."

But not if the archive.debian.org sysads have set up the (customary)
redirect debian-archive -> debian-archive/ -- remember: the web is
messy.

Anyway, there seems to be a pseudo-package www.debian.org [1] against
which to file a bug of this kind.

Cheers
[1] https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?pkg=www.debian.org;dist=unstable
--
t

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--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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