[4963] in testers
Re: erratic host lookup failures
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Mitchell E Berger)
Tue Jul 10 01:51:28 2001
Message-Id: <200107100551.BAA26900@byte-me.mit.edu>
To: Nickolai Zeldovich <kolya@MIT.EDU>
cc: testers@MIT.EDU
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Tue, 10 Jul 2001 01:33:54 EDT."
<200107100533.BAA25852@pepsi-one.mit.edu>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 01:51:24 -0400
From: Mitchell E Berger <mitchb@MIT.EDU>
> Most often I see this bug in Netscape, whereby trying to access
> a page on a certain host for the first time causes a pause, then
> a message:
>
> Netscape is unable to locate the server <hostname>.
>
> after which repeated attempts to load the same URL quickly fail for a
> few seconds, and then the next attempt will pause, and resolve correctly.
> Subsequent accesses to pages on the same host resolve immediately.
This failure (I'm presently only speaking of seeing it with Netscape) is not an Athena bug. It happens with approximately the same frequency you're seeing it on my machine at home, which is running Solaris 8 x86 (not Athenized Solaris) and Netscape Communicator 4.7. I was under the impression that Netscape had its own hostname resolver, so I convinced myself that it's simply set to time out too quickly, and actually remembers the true resolution once it comes in, which is sometimes after it's already told you it can't find the host. That explains the instant success time later, but may be an irrational assumption for other reasons.
Unfortunately, I fail to remember whether I saw it either when my home machine was running Solaris 7 x86, or on an Athena 8.4 machine. However, this admittedly doesn't begin to account for your observance of the problem with lynx, telnet, and finger, and I don't believe I've ever experienced that (though I don't do nearly as much with them as with Netscape on my home machine).
Hopefully this'll be useful in some way while piecing together the puzzle.
Mitch
