HTTP GRANOLA and NetBarrier Firewall

Header tags from Mac

[dstiles]

I have just received a form from a customer through our "I can't access your web site" form.

The reason for rejection was the UA...

Mozilla/5.0 (000000000; 0; 00000 000 00 0 0000; 00000; 0000000000) 0000000000000000 0000000000000

This UA itself is trapped in my logs infrequently in various combinations of zeros, which obviously replace the true UA.

The customer gave the details as Firefox on a Mac. Fair enough, we get lots of those.

The referer wasn't present BUT the header included the field HTTP_GRANOLA which mimicked exactly what I expected from HTTP_REFERER.

I can find only one unique reference on google to this header which was useless apart from a suggestion that NetBarrier Firewall might be the problem. This was posted back in 2003.

I'm guessing that if this IS the problem it's a very old firewall. Does anyone have any information about it, please?

[wilderness]

dstiles,
The following are both from UA pages that I saved previously, one from 2003 and the other from 2005.

Ya read Deutsch?

KunststoffTraumte/5.0 (000000000; 0; 000 000 00 0; 00000; 00000000) Wir betreten feuertruken Himmlische
-----------
Mozilla/5.0 (000000000; 0; 000;) Gecko DEVONtech

[dstiles]

Hmm. Not that well but it's a snatch from Beethoven's Ode To Joy (feuertruken should be feuertrunken)...

"We march, drunk with fire, Holy One, (to thy holy kingdom.)"

Ok, I looked it up on that search engine thingy! :)

Not really useful. :)

Kunststoff Traumte (two words) apparently means something like plastic daydream. Which figures: I'm sure half the punters are in one of these! :)

The first UA, exact from start to finish, is reproduced on a japanese site but google was too miserly to translate it - said the page was too long (two versions: 250K, 970K). The site seems to be a list of browsers so not much use.

Wouldn't let me use the phrase translator, either - all form fields were inert. Probably didn't like me turning off javascript.

[GaryK]

I've got several Germans on one of my website forums if you want a gen-u-ine translation.

[GaryK]

From one of my members who is a German living in Germany.

Gary,
I'm sorry, but it's not real german, at least I can't see any sense behind it.

Wir betreten feuertruken Himmlische
We walk in ? Heavenly.

Doesn't give me a clue what's meant with it.
Are You sure it was meant to be understood? Maybe there were some dots on some letters? Lke ä, ö or ü..

ADDED: Kunststoff Träume, note the special character over the a and the missing "t", does mean plastic dreams. Bernie says this looks like someone used a translation service to go from some other language to German.

[edited by: GaryK at 1:54 am (utc) on Mar. 22, 2009]

[dstiles]

Hmm. You would think a German would be aware of Beethoven Symphony no. 9, especially as there are no acents involved. :)

The thing is, as with poetry, musical liberetti don't actaully have to make literal sense.

Which brings us no nearer discovering what GRANOLA means in this connection. I even checked the webmasterworld entry that google is now listing... :)

[jdMorgan]

> "special character"
> "dots on letters"

Omitting the accents is easily-explainable by the fact that if a "special character" was to be sent in the UA string, it would have to be encoded to comply with HTTP requirements. And the omission of a letter could be due to a typo -- an error that anyone could make.

Jim

[GaryK]

I can't address the artistic interpretation of the words. I was only asking Bernie for a literal translation. I know those special characters can't normally be included in the string, but Bernie didn't know that. I had to explain to him what a user agent string was. :)

I did not ask him if GRANOLA might mean something in German that could be of help to you. I'll ask and get back to you tomorrow cause he's sleeping now and I'm headed for bed too.

[edited by: GaryK at 1:56 am (utc) on Mar. 23, 2009]

[GaryK]

Here's what Bernie thinks about GRANOLA. I doubt it's useful though.

Gary,
there's a sort of potato with that name, nothing else.
I even looked in the dictionary for it.

[dstiles]

According to a wiki "Granola is a breakfast food and snack food consisting of rolled oats, nuts, honey...". Also "a person who is hippie-like, a modern bohemian, environmentalist, or leftist in outlook" and a potato. Take your pick.

Whatever, it still doesn't help. My best guesses are:

1. it's made-up to sound like "granular" which the "designer" may think is relevant to his product;

2. it's totally meaningless and may even be a dynamic, changing from system to system, where "system" is whatever the underlying thing is that uses it - firewall, av, whatever.

Ah, well. Thanks for trying, Gary.

[GaryK]

You're welcome. Just to be clear. In English it' s a breakfast food. In German it's a kind of potato.