From owner-freebsd-questions Thu Oct 22 10:04:38 1998 Return-Path: Received: (from majordom@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id KAA22580 for freebsd-questions-outgoing; Thu, 22 Oct 1998 10:04:38 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG) Received: from dfw-ix7.ix.netcom.com (dfw-ix7.ix.netcom.com [206.214.98.7]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id KAA22571 for ; Thu, 22 Oct 1998 10:04:36 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from graeme@echidna.com) Received: (from smap@localhost) by dfw-ix7.ix.netcom.com (8.8.4/8.8.4) id MAA14074; Thu, 22 Oct 1998 12:00:53 -0500 (CDT) Received: from prn-nj2-13.ix.netcom.com(199.183.207.77) by dfw-ix7.ix.netcom.com via smap (V1.3) id rma014003; Thu Oct 22 12:00:19 1998 Message-ID: <362F8DFF.4BC@echidna.com> Date: Thu, 22 Oct 1998 12:56:47 -0700 From: Graeme Tait Organization: Echidna X-Mailer: Mozilla 2.02 (Win16; I) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Johann Visagie CC: Jerry , freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG, echidna@ix.netcom.com Subject: Re: need a / after a domain? References: <19981022115525.B14541@cityip.co.za> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Johann Visagie wrote: > > On Wed, 21 Oct 1998 at 10:02 SAT, Jerry wrote: > > > > I know I saw this question on the list not to long ago but I just can't > > remember the fix. After the domain name in a browser you must use a / or > > the site won't open. Where is this configuration changed? Are you referring to a browser or server problem? There should not be any such problem for the case mentioned (see below). > Does that happen with all sites or only specific ones? > > The handling of the missing trailing slash is a server issue. The server > should know that when a user requests a file that turns out to be a > directory, it should issue an error 301 ("permanently moved") and redirect > the browser to the index file within that directory. If say http://www.qqq.com/dir is requested, and dir is a directory on the server, the redirect would add a final "/" to make http://hostname/dir/ (this is necessary so that relative URL's within the referenced document can be correctly resolved). What then happens depends on server configuration, but normally as you say it would be configured to default to an index.html or such file within dir. How the server chooses "hostname" for the redirect URL is also a server configuration (and browser) issue, although the server would normally be configured to use www.qqq.com, either because this is the sole host supported, or because it has been configured to use the value of "Host:" header passed by the browser per HTTP/1.1 (although the browser may only be HTTP/1.0 compliant in other respects). However the question I believe relates to the case http://www.xxx.com with no path specification, and no trailing slash after the hostname. I believe this is purely a *browser* issue. The browser should in this case request the path "/", having deduced that the hostname is missing the final "/". No redirect is involved. The *browser* should correct the URL to http://www.xxx.com/ -- Graeme Tait - Echidna To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message