Hi all.

I’m currently in the process of moving a massive website over to another server I put together. For some odd reason, whenever you use the sites cgi based search engine, then hit the back button to see the results again, Internet Explorer now craps out with a:

Warning: Page has Expired The page you requested was created using information you submitted in a form. This page is no longer available. As a security precaution, Internet Explorer does not automatically resubmit your information for you.

To resubmit your information and view this Web page, click the Refresh button.

In fact, this is now the case with anything at all that uses cgi scripts. AGAIN… My current server is running this identical site, and has never experienced a problem such as this. This problem is limited to the “new” server. Perhaps something I need to set in Apache?

Some fast answers to possible questions:

- Yes, the ‘get’ method is being used on all scripts
- Yes, this problem is limited to Internet Explorer, (Netscape works properly --as typical)
- No, I do not, nor have ever used any type of cookie sessions
- No, it doesn’t seem to be happening with my vBulletin forum, or php on general
- No, it’s not my browser settings –this problem is limited to the new server
- So far, pretty much limited to anything with .pl or .cgi extensions

As with most Microbloft problems, this is extremely annoying, as it simply blindsides you- no warning, or explanation as to why it’s happening. Any light you kind people could shine on this would be muchly appreciated. I don’t even know where to begin looking in this case.

Hope to hear back,

Dave H

That’s interesting. I just disabled mod_gzip, and Internet Explorer is no longer sending me that page expired message. It must be something mod_gzip is doing to the page headers. Has anyone else here experienced this?

Thanks,

Dave H

In your scripts that your'e using, send a header direction. In php, you'd do it as follows:

header("Cache-Control: ");
header("pragma: ");

It's not a "problem" with Internet Explorer. It's meant that way. As the developer/programmer, you can fix it by explicitly telling IE what you want it to do for caching.

Edit: Also realize that a user's personal cache settings can override these controls, but it will work for 98% of people out there.

Thanks Duerra. I guess I’m a little confused now. Since the problem has been isolated to mod_rewrite, I’m not sure if this it’s another directive I must add to the mod_rewrite rule set, or the cgi script itself I should play around with, and becasue the correct headers are sent when mod_rewrite is turned off. Here are the directives for mod_rewrite from httpd.conf:

<IfModule mod_gzip.c>
mod_gzip_on yes
mod_gzip_dechunk yes
mod_gzip_keep_workfiles No
mod_gzip_temp_dir /home/modgziptmp
mod_gzip_minimum_file_size 500
mod_gzip_maximum_file_size 1000000
mod_gzip_maximum_inmem_size 1000000
mod_gzip_item_include file \.htm$
mod_gzip_item_include file \.html$
mod_gzip_item_include file \.php$
mod_gzip_item_include mime ^text/.*
mod_gzip_item_include mime ^application/x-httpd-php
mod_gzip_item_include mime ^httpd/unix-directory$
mod_gzip_item_exclude file "\.css$"
mod_gzip_item_exclude file "\.js$"
mod_gzip_item_exclude file "\.wml$"
mod_gzip_item_exclude reqheader "User-Agent: .*Mozilla/4\..*\["
mod_gzip_item_exclude mime ^image/.gif
</IfModule>

Don’t know if this helps, but hopefully someone can eyeball the problem.

Thanks again,

Dave H

Thanks all. I was missing some directives. All is fixed.

Dave H

Care to share? I wasn't previously aware that Apache could send default cache headers...

Ha Ha!... Some administrator I am. I fixed it, but I don’t really know what I fixed. Here’s what I did. I grabbed the mod_gzip directives from a prior httpd.conf file, and replaced the ones you saw (in my earlier message). Here they are:

<IfModule mod_gzip.c>

mod_gzip_on Yes
mod_gzip_can_negotiate Yes
mod_gzip_static_suffix .gz
AddEncoding gzip .gz
mod_gzip_update_static No
mod_gzip_command_version '/mod_gzip_status'
mod_gzip_temp_dir /home/modgziptmp
mod_gzip_keep_workfiles No
mod_gzip_minimum_file_size 500
mod_gzip_maximum_file_size 500000
mod_gzip_maximum_inmem_size 60000
mod_gzip_min_http 1000
mod_gzip_handle_methods GET POST
mod_gzip_item_exclude reqheader "User-agent: Mozilla/4.0[678]"
mod_gzip_item_include file .html$
mod_gzip_item_include file .shtml$
mod_gzip_item_include file .htm$
mod_gzip_item_include file .shtm$
mod_gzip_item_include file .php$
mod_gzip_item_include file .phtml$
mod_gzip_item_exclude file .js$
mod_gzip_item_exclude file .css$
mod_gzip_item_include file .pl$
mod_gzip_item_include handler ^cgi-script$
mod_gzip_item_include mime ^text/html$
mod_gzip_item_include mime ^text/plain$
mod_gzip_item_include mime ^httpd/unix-directory$
mod_gzip_item_exclude mime ^image/
mod_gzip_dechunk Yes
mod_gzip_add_header_count Yes
mod_gzip_send_vary Yes
</IfModule>

I suspect one or several of these ‘additional directives’ has solved the problem with Internet Explorer not caching some of the pages properly, but I’m still trying to figure out what one is doing the trick. By all means, if someone here wants to point this out, I’m listening

Also, mod_gzip was fast before, but with these new additions, now it's just screaming!

Dave H