Users experiencing refresh loop when loading 13.1 blog post

What is/are the relevant URLs or emails?

https://about.gitlab.com/releases/2020/06/22/gitlab-13-1-released/

Briefly describe the bug

Details from the community members who are experiencing this issue can be found on the HackerNews thread re: the 13.1 release post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23604638

What are the steps to reproduce the bug

From AaronFriel:

If anyone from GitLab is reading this, these pages are locked in a refresh loop. I can't read the content because it is scrolling/moving slightly with every refresh which is happening constantly. Latest version of Chrome stable, uBlock Origin in default config, HTTPS Everywhere, React/Redux devtools are the extensions I have installed.

I let the page run for 30 seconds and:

  • CPU usage on two cores was at 100%

  • 2,943 requests were made for 319 MB of resources over 30.06 seconds

A staggering rate of 100 requests per second that persists indefinitely - I have no reason to believe the refresh loop is broken at any point.

From Earwig:

Same issue here as the original post and similar extensions. I followed the suggestion of clearing cookies for about.gitlab.com and it doesn't help.

Please provide any relevant screenshots or screencasts

Video of related issue that was reported in Slack by @caalberts

screen-capture-1

What is your window size, browser, operating system, and versions

  • Safari
  • Firefox
  • Chrome

Have you tried a fresh incognito window? Could this be related to cookies or account type/state?

  • (One report) If I open up the page in incognito, I see two requests in the network tab for the page.
  • (Another report) Incognito appears to be working as expected.

What is your geographic location

  • India
  • Colorado

What type of network are you connected to?

  • Unspecified
  • Wifi Comcast (Colorado)

What cookie values have been observed by users?

  • CookieConsent = -1
    • The user is not within a region that requires consent - all cookies are accepted.
  • CookieConsent = -3
    • Unknown cause.

2020-07-06 Potentially related issue?

Upon further investigation, I'm seeing some 301 redirects.

Edited by Brandon Lyon