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Firefox slow start trying to resolve local hostname

  • 2 replies
  • 12 have this problem
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  • Last reply by 0x18h

0x18h
0x18h
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When starting Firefox it tries to resolve my hostname, but since it is not resolvable from everywhere it takes a lot of time before it actually gives up (5 times the lookup timeout). Having a record in hosts file does not solve it. Is there a way to disable attempts to resolve my hostname and just use the corresponding ip from hosts file?

When starting Firefox it tries to resolve my hostname, but since it is not resolvable from everywhere it takes a lot of time before it actually gives up (5 times the lookup timeout). Having a record in hosts file does not solve it. Is there a way to disable attempts to resolve my hostname and just use the corresponding ip from hosts file?

All Replies (2)

finitarry
finitarry
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I thought the browser would use the Hosts file first? If you do not have DNS service, there are free DNS servers available. Here is a list:

http://pcsupport.about.com/od/tipstricks/a/free-public-dns-servers.htm

0x18h
0x18h Question owner
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Hi finitarry,

thanks for your attention. The problem is not with resolving sites or resolver in general - there everything is ok and hosts file is used as expected.

The thing is on startup before actually launching the gui. It feels like the lookup is somehow hardcoded there - strace shows that it opens a socket with nonblock option set, connects it to my DNS, does sendto for query, and then timeouts waiting for readable sockets poll([{fd=11, events=POLLIN}], 1, 5000) = 0 (Timeout) and repeats it several times.

So though the socket is set non blocking that part of code can actually block in poll(), and I guess it would be nice if it could perform this lookup in parallel with starting the gui.

The server that used to hold my NS records is temporarily down, and it is natural for queries to last forever till timeout, but hosts file always used to save it.

So I just wonder if it is a bug or a feature.