[tz] minor problem in www.iana.org

[Robert Elz]

    Date:        Fri, 05 Jul 2013 08:46:43 -0700
    From:        Paul Eggert <eggert at cs.ucla.edu>
    Message-ID:  <51D6EA63.4080609 at cs.ucla.edu>

  | Thanks for the heads-up.  My guess is that this happened
  | to the new way the tz distribution gets released.


I doubt it was that simple, I fetched the 2013c files the day they were
released (or the day after) and the copies I had (ftp'd from IANA site) were
properly gzip'd.

What's more, the copies on the IANA (ftp) site don't appear to have been
touched since then, and still look to be at least the correct size to be
correctly gzip'd.

Maybe it is something with the way the http server accesses the files
that causes them to get un-gzip'd ?   And yes, that looks to be it, I just
fetched the 2013c code file from http:// and that one arrived (using the
standard NetBSD ftp client that also fetches from http URLs, and wget, and
curl) and that version (all 3 times) did arrive ungzip'd.

Unless IANA are storing the file in 2 different places (one for FTP and one
for HTTP access) then I think it must be something in the way their HTTP
server is configured, most likely do they can geep all their other data
gzip'd but still deliver readable text to people browsing.

Fetching it again today using FTP fetched the gzip'd version.

Lesson to learn - avoid HTTP wherever possible, use FTP instead!

kre

ps: the same behaviour can be observed with the new 2013d files.