bug#59175: GNU Icecat not loading cloudflare

[Ruben Rodriguez]

On 11/13/22 03:01, bill-auger wrote:
> On Sat, 12 Nov 2022 12:38:12 +0100 Antonio wrote:
> > Do you know of this GitLab bug
> > https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/issues/345328?
> yes, that bug is years-old now - it has been addressed on this
> mailing list; but the patches are yet to be accepted:
> https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-gnuzilla/2021-05/msg00005.html
>
> that mentions bug#47276 "Stuck at Cloudflare 'browser checks'"
> (perhaps still open), of which this (bug#59175) is a duplicate
IceCat 102 is not set to spoof the referrer. I have tried both the 
methods those patches indicate, and the problem is not resolved. I have 
tried a long list of changes and I cannot figure out the reason, but it 
doesn't seem to be the user agent. A bad user agent should result in the 
cloudflare check failing and showing a captcha, what we have is a 
redirect loop. I have tested with other cloudflare-served sites and they 
all seem to fail the same way. I'm considering this a release blocker.

A head scratcher is that Abrowser, when loading the same settings file 
from IceCat, works correctly. Same for Firefox 102 ESR binaries from 
mozilla, suggesting that the problem may be in some other part of the 
IceCat build process, either in a patch or other code change; or in the 
toolchain, or in a library embedded at build time. My next step will be 
to build icecat tests with no customization, and add them in chunks, to 
isolate the problem. Ideas and tests are welcome!