GNU bug report logs - #37207
nginx serving files from the store returns Last-Modified = Epoch

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Message #57 received at 37207 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Christopher Baines <mail <at> cbaines.net>
To: 37207 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Cc: ludo <at> gnu.org
Subject: Re: bug#37207: guix.gnu.org returns Last-Modified = Epoch
Date: Sat, 09 May 2020 23:07:41 +0100

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Ludovic Courtès <ludo <at> gnu.org> writes:

> Since the use of the ‘static-web-site’ service, which puts web site
> files in the store, nginx returns a ‘Last-Modified’ header that can
> trick clients into caching things forever:
>
> --8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
> $ wget --debug -O /dev/null   https://guix.gnu.org/packages.json 2>&1 | grep Last
> Last-Modified: Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:01 GMT
> --8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---
>
> We should tell nginx to do not emit ‘Last-Modified’, or to take the
> state from the /srv/guix.gnu.org symlink, if possible.

I ended up looking at this again in relation to Repology [1].

1: https://github.com/repology/repology-updater/issues/218#issuecomment-525905704

Going back to that comment, given that the Last-Modified header (and the
ETag) is wrong, it's probably sensible to remove them. That might even
fix the issue with Repology fetching the packages.json file.

Alternatively (or in addition), we could run a really simple Guile web
server that just serves the packages.json file with the right
Last-Modified value, and have NGinx proxy requests to that server. This
would be pretty easy to setup I believe, and would allow providing a
correct value.

Thoughts?

Chris

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