Subject: Re: Suboptimal DNS lookup in Firefox/Mozilla on lossy net connections?
To: David Brownlee <abs@NetBSD.org>
From: Jorgen Lundman <lundman@lundman.net>
List: netbsd-users
Date: 08/03/2006 21:35:09
Not sure how much code Firefox and Mozilla share these days, but there are a 
load of DNS issues when compiling Mozilla. It uses getaddrinfo by default on 
NetBSD, and NetBSD's getaddrinfo() is broken. Will very often stall forever and 
what not.

When I compile Mozilla I have to make sure nsprpub/pr/include/md/_netbsd.h to 
not have _PR_HAVE_GETADDRINFO.

Then it will work better, but not great. If you have too many simultaneous 
lookups it can go bad. Probably has the alternative to getaddrinfo() is not 
thread safe.

Just a thought if you want to try it.

Lund


David Brownlee wrote:
> On Wed, 2 Aug 2006, Brian de Alwis wrote:
> 
>> Hello everybody.  I'm seeing some strange DNS resolving behaviour
>> with firefox, and have run out of leads.
>>
>> At home I get to freeride off an open wireless connection.  But
>> it's subject to frequent bouts of interference and so the signal
>> fades in and out over the course of a day.
>>
>> I've found that Firefox will start to exhibit rather strange DNS
>> lookup behaviour under this situation, where hostname lookups take
>> extraordinarily long periods of time to resolve -- and sometimes
>> are never resolved.  But utilities like ping are able to resolve
>> the name relatively quickly.  This behaviour disappears if I quit
>> and restart firefox, but it will reappear if I stop using it for
>> a bit.  Replacing the hostnames with the IP addresses works fine.
>>
>> These problems don't occur when I'm at the university, where I'm
>> behind a reliable fat pipe.
>>
>> Does this ring any bells with anybody?
> 
> 
>     No, but in case it helps, a workaround might be to run a caching
>     nameserver on your machine locally and point firefox at that...
> 

-- 
Jorgen Lundman       | <lundman@lundman.net>
Unix Administrator   | +81 (0)3 -5456-2687 ext 1017 (work)
Shibuya-ku, Tokyo    | +81 (0)90-5578-8500          (cell)
Japan                | +81 (0)3 -3375-1767          (home)