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

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From: Ludovic Courtès <ludo <at> gnu.org>
To: Christopher Baines <mail <at> cbaines.net>
Cc: 37207 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: bug#37207: guix.gnu.org returns Last-Modified = Epoch
Date: Sun, 10 May 2020 12:11:16 +0200

Howdy!

Christopher Baines <mail <at> cbaines.net> skribis:

> 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?

I think it wouldn’t really help because the Last-Modified issue is
pervasive.  It shows for instance when accessing the web site: one often
has to force the browser to reload pages to get the latest version.

So I’m all for one of the solutions that were proposed earlier.

WDYT?

Ludo’.

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