Handling the favicon.ico file with Mozilla Firefox

Problem background:

The favicon.ico file is a small graphic icon used by some browsers (including Microsoft Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox) to enhance the display of address bar information and "favorites" bookmark lists. When requesting a resource, these browsers also try to locate the site's custom favicon.ico file.

There is a difference, however, in the way Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox decide when to request the favicon.ico file:

The request and response exchange between a Mozilla Firefox browser and a WebSEAL server can result in an HTTP 404 "Not found" message for the user when the favicon.ico does not exist.

In a protected WebSEAL environment, Mozilla Firefox's attempt to access the favicon.ico file triggers a login prompt. WebSEAL caches /favicon.ico as its "last requested URL." Once the user successfully logs in, WebSEAL redirects the request to this "last requested URL" location. The file (being non-existent in this example) is not found and a 404 "Not found" error is returned to the user. The originally requested page is never accessed because of the redirection process.

After accessing a protected resource from an unauthenticated state, instead of being redirected to the originally requested resource, the user is redirected to /favicon.ico. A favicon POP is now attached to the favicon object to prevent this behavior.

Solution:

The following steps solve this problem:

Steps

  1. Place a favicon.ico file in the junction-root directory. We can access this directory from the Manage Reverse Proxy Management Root page of the LMI.

  2. Add a definition for the ico file format in the [content-mime-types] of the WebSEAL configuration file: 
    [content-mime-types] 
ico = image/x-icon

Parent topic: Web server response configuration

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