Topic: Workaround for IE no-cache bug

[chfrocka]

I'm using Apache 2.0.59 as a reverse proxy to an app server that among other things, serves up files in Word andExcel format.

The client accesses the Apache server using SSL.

There is a somewhat well-known bug (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/815313) in IE 5+ where if you are opening a document like descibed above and there is a response header of Cache-Control:no-cache and/or Pragma:no-cache, IE errors out on the download. The error can be something like: "Internet Explorer cannot download <filename>" ... "file cannot be written to the cache".

Looking at the headers going back and forth, it looks like Apache is adding Cache-Control:no-cache and Pragma:no-cache to every response.

I tried using Header unset, but no luck there. Any suggestions on how to workaround this IE problem?

Thanks!

[James Blond]

That is only with IE6 SP1 or earlier. Since Win XP does have SP2 (IE than have SP 2 as well) it works fine. Now there is IE 7! IE 6 SP 1 is rather old... SP 2 came out in 2005.

[chfrocka]

Thanks for the reply. I mean to update this thread. The problem turned out to be our SSO provider (Oracle). This blog post is what clued me in: http://coreidng.blogspot.com/2006_05_01_archive.html

Thanks!

[James Blond]

If you deliver the files with PHP, you could send those headers. But the Apache/PHP Process would grow in memory with the file size you offer to download.