Chromium on the QNAP act_runner intermittently raises ERR_CONNECTION_
REFUSED on page.goto('/') even when curl on the same pinned IP returns
307 a second earlier and the other four smoke tests (api/health,
/auth/signin, login, nav) all pass against the same container. The
smoke suite has blocked release-images on two successive docker-deploy
failures (bee5bbf, e2982a8) and a shell-level suite retry didn't help
— the Chromium refusal is reproducible per run.
Switch this one test to Playwright's HTTP request API with
maxRedirects: 0 and assert on status + Location. Semantically
equivalent (it verifies middleware wires / to /auth/signin) and
bypasses whatever Chromium-specific quirk is refusing the navigation.