Problem with search.cpan.org grep tool

[James E Keenan]

I am encountering a problem using search.cpan.org's grep tool tonight to
locate strings which I know to be found within particular distributions.

Example 1: I go to http://search.cpan.org/tools/CPAN-1.83 and grep for
'CPAN'. Result:

### BEGIN ERROR MESSAGE ###
ERROR
The requested URL could not be retrieved

While trying to retrieve the URL:
http://search.cpan.org:9290/grep?release=CPAN-1.83&string=CPAN&i=1&n=1

The following error was encountered:

* Zero Sized Reply

Squid did not receive any data for this request.
### END ERROR MESSAGE ###

The string 'CPAN' obviously must be found somewhere within that
distribution.

Example 2: I go to
http://search.cpan.org/grep?release=List-Compare-0.32&string=List&i=1&n=1
and grep for 'list'. I know that string exists in that module, because
I wrote it! Result:

### BEGIN ERROR MESSAGE ###
ERROR
The requested URL could not be retrieved

While trying to retrieve the URL:
http://search.cpan.org:9290/grep?release=List-Compare-0.32&string=List&i=1&n=1



The following error was encountered:

* Zero Sized Reply

Squid did not receive any data for this request.
### END ERROR MESSAGE ###

Googling for "Zero Sized Reply" suggests that this is a server-side
problem with Squid. Are other people experiencing this? Thanks.

Jim Keenan

 

[James E Keenan]

I am encountering a problem using search.cpan.org's grep tool tonight to
locate strings which I know to be found within particular distributions.


The following error was encountered:

* Zero Sized Reply

Squid did not receive any data for this request.
### END ERROR MESSAGE ###

Here's an excerpt from Squid's FAQ
(http://www.squid-cache.org/Doc/FAQ/FAQ_long.html):

11.51 Why do I sometimes get ``Zero Sized Reply''?

This happens when Squid makes a TCP connection to an origin server, but
for some reason, the connection is closed before Squid reads any data.
Depending on various factors, Squid may be able to retry the request
again. If you see the ``Zero Sized Reply'' error message, it means that
Squid was unable to retry, or that all retry attempts also failed.

What causes a connection to close prematurely? It could be a number of
things, including:
1 An overloaded origin server.
2 TCP implementation/interoperability bugs. See the System-Dependent
Weirdnesses section for details.
3 Race conditions with HTTP persistent connections.
4 Buggy or misconfigured NAT boxes, firewalls, and load-balancers.
5 Denial of service attacks.
6 Utilizing TCP blackholing on FreeBSD.

You may be able to use tcpdump to track down and observe the problem.

Jim Keenan