IE renaming tar.gz downloads to tar.tar

[Mthales]

I am having a bit of a problem with IE. When I use it to download a file called blah.tar.gz it renames it to blah.tar.tar.

I've done a bit of research and it seems that this is happening because it detects the HTTP header:
Content-Type: application/x-tar
and decides that it must have the .tar extension. This makes sense but nothing I've found tells me how to change it's settings that control this behaviour - they all say just rename the file.

Does anyone here have any suggestions as to where I should be looking, because some of my "less technical users" can't get the hang of changing the file name and just complain that the file is "broken" - it's driving me nuts!

Thanks in advance
Mthales


"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." --- Douglas Adams

 

[smah]

I've seen the same thing. Although not a real solution, this works. When the 'save as' dialog is displayed, instead of allowing Windows default 'save as type' to be .tar archive, change the 'save as type' to "All files". The file extensions will be retained correctly.

 

[Diancecht]

Maybe this helps: Handling MIME Types in Internet Explorer

Cheers,
Dian

 

[Mthales]

smah - sorry anything that requires the user to take extra action is not going to work for me :-(

Dian - thanks very much for that extra info it seems to suggest a new way forward.


"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." --- Douglas Adams

 

[smah]

Well unfortunately as you've pointed out, the problem is the header sent by the server. There's no real way to correct this at the client. For example, if you download one of [link ftp://ftp.telamon.com/freevt3k/]these[/url] .gz files, you won't have that problem, because the server sends the correct header info.

 

[Mthales]

Yeah that is exactly the point so the extra info that Dian pointed me to has helped me change the header info (fortunately this was something under my control) and thus (it seems so far) solve the problem.

Thanks again to you both for your help
M




"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." --- Douglas Adams