RE: getaddrinfo() loses on RedHat 6.0

Right. The reason for the problem is that getaddrinfo() tries to resolve the name "localhost", rooted at the top level, using the DNS server (if one is running). The older functions don't do this - they look in /etc/hosts first, before trying DNS; but getaddrinfo() is probably doing the right thing - I think - because it has been called with the AI_CANONNAME flag, which is a request for it to find the canonical name of the specified host, and the only way to do that is to use DNS (/etc/hosts doesn't specify it). Interestingly, the DNS-HOWTO supplies a couple of sample configurations for caching DNS. RedHat have used the first one in the HOWTO, which doesn't have a separate "localhost" zone (hence looking up "localhost." in nslookup will try to contact a root nameserver - "localhost" works in nslookup though, because that's in /etc/hosts). Later on in the file, where it talks about migration from bind 4 to bind 8, it shows a caching configuration created by the migration script, which includes a "localhost" zone - and after making this change, things all work fine. I think this is really a system configuration issue, and RedHat's fault, but I think it might be nice to place a comment in the PROBLEMS file about it, or maybe a configure test to see if getaddrinfo() takes months to resolve "localhost", and comments on what might be wrong. The problem won't occur if: * You automatically remove external nameservers from the named configuration whenever you come off the Internet, and add them back again when you connect. (Since I've only just set all of this up, I wasn't doing that). * Or you have a "localhost" zone in your named.conf. * Or you aren't running named. Regards, Alastair. ____________________________________________________________ Alastair Houghton ajhoughton(a)lineone.net