Bug 6678 – Reporting error '500 Line too long (4127; limit is 4096)' but don't know why

Bug 6678 - Reporting error '500 Line too long (4127; limit is 4096)' but don't know why

Summary:

Reporting error '500 Line too long (4127; limit is 4096)' but don't know why

Status:	RESOLVED FIXED

Product:	Validator
Component:	check
Version:	HEAD
Platform:	PC Windows XP

Importance:	P2 normal (vote)
Target Milestone:	0.8.6
Assigned To:	Ville Skytt
QA Contact:	qa-dev tracking

URL:	http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=htt...
Whiteboard:
Keywords:

Depends on:
Blocks:
	Show dependency tree / graph

Reported:	2009-03-10 16:23 UTC by Colin
Modified:	2009-10-05 15:18 UTC (History)
CC List:	0 users (show)

See Also:

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Description Colin 2009-03-10 16:23:19 UTC

I've been trying to validate my site but keep getting the error '500 Line too
long (4127; limit is 4096)'.  I have tried everything I can but can't figure
out what the problem is.  I have other sites built with the same template which
all validate fine, but this and one other throw this error.

Is it possible to elaborate on the error in some way.

Thanks.

Comment 1 Ville Skytt 2009-09-17 19:16:23 UTC

The reproducer URL seems to require authentication now so this can't be
verified with at the moment, but another reproducer is
http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.w3.org%2FBugs%2FPublic%2Fbuglist.cgi%3Fproduct%3DValidator%3Border%3Dbugs.bug_id

The error comes from the libwww-perl library which sets maximum line length for
HTTP headers and some other things to 4096 bytes (or characters, I haven't
checked that closely).  This may not be enough in certain cases, such as the
reproducer above, which tries to set a very long cookie.  Perhaps that's the
issue with your URL as well.

I don't know if/how the validator could do anything about this right now, but
I'll look into whether bumping the default max line length somewhat in upstream
libwww-perl would be an option.

Comment 2 Colin 2009-09-18 08:22:15 UTC

Thanks for the response.  I figured this out a while back actually but forgot
to update this post.  The problem was due to storing page permissions in the
cookie to save on data access, and when the site reached a certain number of
pages the cookie got too large.  It also affected Google Analytics and a few
other third party services so was causing quite a problem for us.

Anyway it's resolved now but thanks for your time.

Colin.

Comment 3 Ville Skytt 2009-10-05 15:18:14 UTC

The default max line length has been increased to 8k in upstream libwww-perl
(will probably appear in 5.833) and the next versions of the validator and link
checker will have a workaround for this issue also when running with earlier
libwww-perl versions.

http://www.w3.org/mid/E1MupGC-0006rC-8X%40lionel-hutz.w3.org