Note: This bug is displayed in read-only format because the product is no longer active in Red Hat Bugzilla.
For bugs related to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 product line. The current stable release is 5.10. For Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 and above, please visit Red Hat JIRA https://issues.redhat.com/secure/CreateIssue!default.jspa?pid=12332745 to report new issues.

Bug 455185

Summary: Misleading RedirectMatch in /etc/httpd/conf.d/mailman.conf
Product: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 Reporter: Mark Sapiro <mark>
Component: mailmanAssignee: Jan Kaluža <jkaluza>
Status: CLOSED NEXTRELEASE QA Contact: qe-baseos-daemons
Severity: low Docs Contact:
Priority: low    
Version: 5.0CC: ovasik
Target Milestone: rc   
Target Release: ---   
Hardware: All   
OS: Linux   
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version: Doc Type: Bug Fix
Doc Text:
Story Points: ---
Clone Of:
: 606311 (view as bug list) Environment:
Last Closed: 2013-03-11 08:40:34 UTC Type: ---
Regression: --- Mount Type: ---
Documentation: --- CRM:
Verified Versions: Category: ---
oVirt Team: --- RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team: --- Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:
Bug Depends On:    
Bug Blocks: 606311    

Description Mark Sapiro 2008-07-13 17:10:03 UTC
The mailman rpm installs /etc/httpd/conf.d/mailman.conf which contains the
following:
-------------------------------
# Uncomment the following line, replacing www.example.com with your server's
# name, to redirect queries to /mailman to the listinfo page (recommended).

#RedirectMatch ^/mailman[/]*$ http://www.example.com/mailman/listinfo
-------------------------------
While this may be appropriate for installations where all mailman lists are in
the one www.example.com domain, in an installation where there are mailman lists
in multiple virtual domains, a more appropriate redirect is

RedirectMatch ^/mailman[/]*$ /mailman/listinfo

I think this latter redirect should be the default and the one containing scheme
and host should be indicated as only being appropriate if you wish to redirect
say http://other.example.com/mailman to http://www.example.com/mailman/listinfo.

Comment 1 Mark Sapiro 2008-07-13 17:48:31 UTC
I have just seen that this bug appears to be a duplicate of Bug 125396:.  John
Dennis says in a comment to that bug:

<quote>
I would think this would return a redirect to a client that is neither
a properly formed URL nor would it contain the server address
component of the URL which the client needs. Note this is not
redirected internally to the apache server.
</quote>

While the above is true, it is not a problem. The browser issues the original
http GET to Host: www.example.com for path /mailman. It receives the 302
indicating Location: /mailman/listinfo so it issues another GET to the same
host/scheme for path /mailman/listinfo.

It works just the same as an href= in a document. I.e., it could be
href="http://www.example.com/mailman/listinfo", or it could be
href="/mailman/listinfo". It works either way. In fact, depending on Apache's
error documents, it will return a document along with the 302 that might look like

    <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//IETF//DTD HTML 2.0//EN">\n
    <html><head>\n
    <title>302 Found</title>\n
    </head><body>\n
    <h1>Found</h1>\n
    <p>The document has moved <a href="/mailman/listinfo">here</a>.</p>\n
    <hr>\n
    <address>Apache/2.2.3 (CentOS) Server at www.example.com Port 80</address>\n
    </body></html>\n


Comment 3 RHEL Program Management 2011-01-11 20:39:40 UTC
This request was evaluated by Red Hat Product Management for
inclusion in the current release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
Because the affected component is not scheduled to be updated in the
current release, Red Hat is unfortunately unable to address this
request at this time. Red Hat invites you to ask your support
representative to propose this request, if appropriate and relevant,
in the next release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

Comment 4 RHEL Program Management 2011-01-11 23:05:56 UTC
This request was erroneously denied for the current release of
Red Hat Enterprise Linux.  The error has been fixed and this
request has been re-proposed for the current release.

Comment 5 RHEL Program Management 2011-05-31 13:28:42 UTC
This request was evaluated by Red Hat Product Management for
inclusion in the current release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
Because the affected component is not scheduled to be updated in the
current release, Red Hat is unfortunately unable to address this
request at this time. Red Hat invites you to ask your support
representative to propose this request, if appropriate and relevant,
in the next release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

Comment 6 Jan Kaluža 2012-03-07 11:01:57 UTC
It should be possible to do it with the current version of httpd in rhel5. Proposing for fastrack, because it's only change in the comment and does not affect actual mailman configuration.

Comment 9 Jan Kaluža 2013-03-11 08:40:34 UTC
I am sorry, but it is now too late in the RHEL-5 release cycle.
RHEL-5.10 (the next RHEL-5 minor release) is going to be the first
production phase 2 [1] release of RHEL-5. Since phase 2 we'll be
addressing only security and critical issues.
This one issue is fixed in RHEL-6 therefore I am closing the bug as
NEXTRELEASE.

[1] https://access.redhat.com/support/policy/updates/errata/