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I found this similar question here on serverfault, but the answers there don't cover my case (that I can tell).

On some [apparently] random basis, Firefox (only browser I've tried) will try to download a PHP page rather than 'load' it.

Often, closing the download/open dialog and re-clicking the link will make it work properly. Sometimes, I need to bounce Apache.

This is annoying not only to myself, but to others who use my server. Any idea as to what could be causing this?

Output of top:

(mysqld runs anywhere from 1% to 190% on this server, but I have not noticed a correlation between its spikes and Apache flaking out on whether to offer a PHP page for "opening" and just running it like it should.)

top - 15:37:38 up 44 days, 10:17,  1 user,  load average: 0.11, 0.37, 0.43
Tasks:  39 total,   2 running,  37 sleeping,   0 stopped,   0 zombie
Cpu0  : 94.6% us,  5.4% sy,  0.0% ni,  0.0% id,  0.0% wa,  0.0% hi,  0.0% si
Cpu1  : 94.9% us,  5.1% sy,  0.0% ni,  0.0% id,  0.0% wa,  0.0% hi,  0.0% si
Mem:   1474560k total,  1464856k used,     9704k free,        0k buffers
Swap:        0k total,        0k used,        0k free,        0k cached

  PID USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S %CPU %MEM    TIME+  COMMAND                                                                                                                                     
 3698 mysql     15   0  124m  28m 4348 S 187.0  1.9   5:26.25 mysqld                                                                                                                                      
11286 root      15   0  3552  880  656 S  1.6  0.1  83:31.36 dovecot                                                                                                                                      
    1 root      15   0  1652  608  520 S  0.0  0.0   3:19.89 init                                                                                                                                         
 3622 root      15   0 21220 8992 5524 S  0.0  0.6   0:00.17 httpd                                                                                                                                        
 3651 root      19   0  2124 1040  888 S  0.0  0.1   0:00.00 mysqld_safe                                                                                                                                  
 3709 apache    15   0 41464  27m 4104 S  0.0  1.9   0:03.21 httpd                                                                                                                                        
 3728 apache    16   0 44008  29m 4276 S  0.0  2.1   0:07.59 httpd                                                                                                                                        
 3853 apache    16   0 44568  30m 4244 S  0.0  2.1   0:08.38 httpd                                                                                                                                        
 3869 apache    15   0 35084  20m 3040 S  0.0  1.4   0:01.82 httpd                                                                                                                                        
 9580 root      23   0  1548  576  492 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 udevd                                                                                                                                        
 9811 apache    15   0 32736  17m 2808 S  0.0  1.2   0:00.22 httpd                                                                                                                                        
10042 root      15   0  1552  528  440 S  0.0  0.0   0:28.87 syslogd                                                                                                                                      
10047 root      22   0  1492  372  308 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 klogd                                                                                                                                        
10065 named     18   0 47508 2876 1920 S  0.0  0.2   0:37.05 named                                                                                                                                        
10123 root      15   0  4068 1144  840 S  0.0  0.1   0:08.00 sshd                                                                                                                                         
10137 root      18   0  2112  756  632 S  0.0  0.1   0:00.00 xinetd                                                                                                                                       
11350 root      15   0  2632 1052  532 S  0.0  0.1   0:20.59 crond                                                                                                                                        
11362 root      15   0  6404 2140 1072 S  0.0  0.1   3:11.85 dovecot-auth                                                                                                                                 
11383 xfs       18   0  3172 1476  768 S  0.0  0.1   0:01.21 xfs                                                                                                                                          
11401 root      16   0  1720  452  344 S  0.0  0.0   0:03.66 atd                                                                                                                                          
11411 root      18   0  4092  804  576 S  0.0  0.1   0:00.00 saslauthd                                                                                                                                    
11412 root      18   0  4092  468  240 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 saslauthd                                                                                                                                    
11435 root      18   0  7344 5388 1628 S  0.0  0.4   1:41.01 miniserv.pl                                                                                                                                  
11935 root      15   0  6944 2240 1804 S  0.0  0.2   0:00.01 sshd                                                                                                                                         
11938 datente   15   0  7092 1520 1068 R  0.0  0.1   0:00.00 sshd                                                                                                                                         
11939 datente   15   0  2176 1312 1052 S  0.0  0.1   0:00.00 bash                                                                                                                                         
12005 datente   15   0  1912  992  788 R  0.0  0.1   0:00.00 top                                                                                                                                          
12161 root      15   0 11164  480  336 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 vzctl                                                                                                                                        
12162 root      17   0  2184 1292 1068 S  0.0  0.1   0:00.01 bash                                                                                                                                         
13574 root      15   0  7380 2016  992 S  0.0  0.1   0:01.88 sendmail                                                                                                                                     
13583 smmsp     18   0  6528 1640  828 S  0.0  0.1   0:00.00 sendmail                                                                                                                                     
20230 datente   18   0  2748 1224  712 S  0.0  0.1   0:00.07 screen                                                                                                                                       
20231 datente   15   0  2316 1344 1060 S  0.0  0.1   0:00.00 bash                                                                                                                                         
20264 datente   26  10 1132m 2884  844 S  0.0  0.2  13:50.31 fah6                                                                                                                                         
23843 dovecot   15   0  3556 1532 1268 S  0.0  0.1   4:06.58 imap-login                                                                                                                                   
23845 dovecot   15   0  3552 1528 1268 S  0.0  0.1   4:07.76 imap-login                                                                                                                                   
23847 dovecot   15   0  3556 1536 1272 S  0.0  0.1   4:09.06 imap-login                                                                                                                                   
23899 dovecot   15   0  3556 1532 1268 S  0.0  0.1   4:07.39 imap-login                                                                                                                                   
23963 dovecot   15   0  3556 1532 1268 S  0.0  0.1   4:06.99 imap-login
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1  
Have you let firefox download to see what it retrieved? I have seen this type of behavior when discovering some really obscure bugs in php. It is important to determine if you get blank page or if you get the php/html source. – Zoredache Jun 29 '10 at 16:26
Is the URL public, and if so, what is it? :-) – unhillbilly Jun 29 '10 at 17:12
that's the thing - it's either the raw page, or it's blank - no rhyme or reason I've yet seen :-| ..also - re-clicking the link seconds later works fine – warren Jun 29 '10 at 17:24
@unhillbilly - I'm seeing this on both "normal" (ie, home-written simple PHP pages) and "supplied" pages (such as those with wordpress) – warren Jun 29 '10 at 17:38
Raw page, meaning the PHP code? If so, the question is why isn't it consistently parsing as PHP.. – Warner Jun 29 '10 at 19:57
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3 Answers

up vote 6 down vote accepted

If PHP is configured properly in Apache and the client is functioning properly, the PHP script may not be specifying the proper MIME type for the content output. The Content-type often has to be printed for the browser to understand how to handle the data.

What is the content of the file that Firefox is attempting to download?

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Agree. This is a server side problem. Firefox is doing the best it can with bad data. The server is not setting the correct header or not executing the PHP and returning it to the client instead. looking at the contents of the file downloaded will tell you which. If it's HTML then the problem is the former if PHP then the later. – Chris Nava Jun 29 '10 at 17:14
the issue has cleared-up over the last week, but this being a server-side issue is most reasonable – warren Jul 6 '10 at 15:21
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up vote 0 down vote

You might try loading your server (if its not production or if you have a test copy) with Apache Jarkarta Jmeter http://jakarta.apache.org/jmeter/index.html

It takes a half hour or so to figure it out if you have never used it, but it's fairly straight forward to use. You can make hundreds of requests and see the returned information from your server, and even render the pages if you desire. This may enable you to determine correlations, be it load, random, or incorrect headers\mime issues.

It's a wonderful tool that can be used for under load time diagnostics.

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up vote -1 down vote

Are you precompressing your page and then allowing mod_deflate to recompress? The issue you're running into is that Firefox has not received Content-length: bytes from the server, and therefore treats it as a partial download. Using live-http-headers, you'll see that it does indeed have text/html as the content type and saving the file does have the proper rendered content less a few bytes. Chunked encoding can also cause an issue if the content is just the right number of bytes.

The issue happens when Firefox encounters a short download, either via a timeout or connection closed issue (through sigkill, etc).

Warner's novice assumption that the content type is set incorrectly just shows that he's not dealt in high volume web traffic. I've noticed this behavior more frequently on 2.2.14/2.2.15 to the point that we backported a few patches to 2.2.12

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4  
Easy with the "novice assumption." Your assuming he's using mod_deflate. Your sounding a little adversarial. – Joshua Enfield Jun 29 '10 at 19:37
Seems like you're the one making the assumption. I'm recommending troubleshooting. – Warner Jun 29 '10 at 20:05
As it is a serverside issue that occurs in high volume hosting, the common problem with firefox is that the content-length doesn't match what it has received from apache. This can happen for a number of reasons, one is using ob_start to compress, then mod_deflate running on top. Another is if the apache processes time out or the connection is closed before Firefox gets the last bytes of the transaction. It is not an improperly configured server as evidenced by the fact that sometimes requests work. The novice assumption is expecting different behavior from apache on each pageload. – karmawhore Jun 29 '10 at 20:16
Why someone would assume that reloading a page repeatedly and having it work one time, and not the next, and assuming that the content-type is being set incorrectly by the server. I don't need to troubleshoot it, the issue is common, is documented in several bugs on firefox's bugtracker, and is documented in apache's bugtracker. 2.2.12 with the security patches backported fixes it. Insanity is repeating the same action over and over again, expecting different results. But, thanks again to the SF boys club for the downvotes. Do correct answers scare you guys that much? – karmawhore Jun 29 '10 at 20:20
1  
If warren's results were consistently blank or had incomplete parsed results, your theory would be a good starting point. It seems that he sometimes receives raw PHP code according to his comments. It will be interesting to see what additional information he can provide. – Warner Jun 29 '10 at 20:42
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