Behind-the-scene requests & SPDY

[gavin20]

Hello,

Not sure if this is an issue or more of a question - is it possible to monitor spdy connections? I do have an option to review chrome-scheme, but I do not see the below connections in uMatrix. I was hoping more control over these connections - if possible, maybe force thru http?

Via chrome://net-internals/#spdy

Host Alternate Protocol
www.gstatic.com
www.google.com
ssl.gstatic.com
mail.google.com
lh3.googleusercontent.com
encrypted.google.com
clients6.google.com
clients5.google.com
clients2.google.com
apis.google.com
ajax.googleapis.com
accounts.google.com

[gorhill]

chrome-scheme is not what you are looking for, as it is for pages which URL starts with chrome:// -- chrome://settings/, chrome://extensions/ for examples.

chromium-behind-the-scene is where you will find network requests which are made outside any tab. To access the chromium-behind-the-scene matrix, just go to uMatrix's dashboard, and bring up uMatrix pop-up while on any page in the dashboard:

Note that not all behind-the-scene can be seen by uMatrix. For instance, any requests related to browser/extension updates, and other such critical requests are not going through extensions. Also, network requests using websocket protocol are not seen by extensions (yet, chromium issue 129353).

[gavin20]

Gotcha - here's what I see though. Looks like it's missing mail.google.com & googleusercontent.com. These connections are accessed via homepage extension(ANTP widgets - rss feed/meta tiles/gmail).

[gorhill]

Looks like it's missing mail.google.com & googleusercontent.com. These connections are accessed via homepage extension(ANTP widgets - rss feed/meta tiles/gmail).

You will probably find them on the tab where they occurred: if a network request can be traced back to a specific tab, it will appear in the matrix for that tab. The chromium-behind-the-scene matrix is for those network which can't be tracked to a specific tab.

Edit: Look at the first screenshot you sent, they are in there...

[gavin20]

I do see some behind-the-scene requests, but not all of them. Example - I show the following url_requests occur in 'chrome://net-internals/#events' when I first launch Chrome. My expectation would be to see the following entries in uMatrix's Statistic page -

https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/feed/atom?nocache
http://127.0.0.1/?osname=win
https://clients2.google.com/service/update2

I do recall these entries being visible in earlier uMatrix builds in the statistics page, including HTTP Switchboard. I also redirect Chrome variations server url to 127.0.0.1, which I used to see in the statistics page, enabled via flag "--variations-server-url=http://127.0.0.1".

[gorhill]

Ok look... Your first message there was no context whatsoever in how you got the requests in your lists. It is difficult to answer properly and in a time-saving manner.

Here it is: all net requests are recorded in one matrix or another, except for those documented as not going through the webRequest API (webSockets, update-related, web store-related).

Now you are disclosing a bit more information which should have been disclosed in the first report to save time: "when I first launch Chrome". That is issue #93, and even if I come around as improving this, it is really un-fixable as per browser design.

Bottom-line, I can't investigate for you remotely if you don't look first at every details before reporting to confirm there is really an issue. In your first report you did not look at the behind-the-scene matrix. In your second report, there is no mail.google.com.

So this: except for the known shortcomings of the webRequest API, please give me exact repro steps for whatever issue you have carefully confirmed on your side. So far I did see anything unexpected. I need repro steps, and before posting them, ensure it has nothing to do with the known shortcoming.

[gorhill]

With the unified logger, users will no longer miss network requests, so long as they go through the web request API.