Since upgrading to Red Hat 6.0, Netscape (4.51 and now 4.6) pauses when reading my homepage. That is, Netscape starts up fine, displaying the "about:" page. I click on the "about:" page to force Netscape to go to my homepage which is entirely local files on kilroy and there is a many second pause that I didn't see on any Netscape version before 4.51 or on any version of Red Hat before 6.0. This COULD be a nameserver issue as the pause seems shorter when I an commected (via ppp) to the net than it does when I am not connected. I am not positive about this, however. Does Netscape 4.51+ do any nameserver requests when fetching the home page that cannot be satisfied by a caching-only name server? My homepage is specified as a "file:/...." url. When starting Netscape from certain Gnome programs (usually from the Help menu of the Gnome program), Gnome times out waiting for Netscape. I don't know if this is related or unrelated. Trying this while connected to the net, I can't seem to replicate this pause from Gnome programs.
More information. After I start netscape 4.6, if I am not connected to the net, I eventually see the following message in my logs: Jun 16 00:54:35 kilroy named[363]: ns_forw: sendto([192.33.4.12].53): Network is unreachable Doing an nslookup on that address gives me c.root-servers.net, so it looks like Netscape is causing a name-server query even to do a local "file:/" URL
My final bit of information. I reproduced the Netscape/Gnome behavior. If you run AisleRiot from the Gnome menus and click on Help and click on the help for either kind of game, it will bring up Netscape. You'll see the Netscape window and a file:/ argument under /usr/share. Netscape won't display the image for 10-30 seconds, however, if you are not connected to the Internet. After a while, Gnome gives the popup that says the following with the two buttons at the bottom: No response to the SaveYourself command. The program may be slow, stopped or broken. You may wait for it to respond or remove it. Remove Program Cancel
what if you go to (as a startup page, or wherever) file:///usr/share/gnome/help/aisleriot/C/intro.html instead of: file:/usr/share/gnome/help/aisleriot/C/intro.html
Same exact behavior including the "No response to the SaveYourself command" complaint by gnome. (I suppose it could be E complaining.)
What's the output of a) 'ifconfig' and b) 'route -n' when you are and aren't connected to the net?
::::::::NOT CONNECTED TO THE NET:::::::::::: kilroy> ifconfig eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:10:4B:14:BF:43 inet addr:192.168.1.1 Bcast:192.168.1.255 Mask:255.255.255.0 UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 RX packets:16988 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:62405 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:30119 collisions:21894 txqueuelen:100 Interrupt:11 Base address:0xe800 lo Link encap:Local Loopback inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0 UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:3924 Metric:1 RX packets:112393 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:112393 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:0 kilroy> route -n Kernel IP routing table Destination Gateway Genmask Flags Metric Ref Use Iface 192.168.1.1 0.0.0.0 255.255.255.255 UH 0 0 0 eth0 192.168.1.0 0.0.0.0 255.255.255.0 U 0 0 0 eth0 127.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 255.0.0.0 U 0 0 0 lo ::::::::CONNECTED TO THE NET::::::::: kilroy> ifconfig eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:10:4B:14:BF:43 inet addr:192.168.1.1 Bcast:192.168.1.255 Mask:255.255.255.0 UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 RX packets:16988 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:62407 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:30121 collisions:21894 txqueuelen:100 Interrupt:11 Base address:0xe800 lo Link encap:Local Loopback inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0 UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:3924 Metric:1 RX packets:112393 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:112393 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:0 ppp0 Link encap:Point-to-Point Protocol inet addr:205.243.139.239 P-t-P:198.147.221.1 Mask:255.255.255.255 UP POINTOPOINT RUNNING NOARP MULTICAST MTU:552 Metric:1 RX packets:8 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:8 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:10 kilroy> route -n Kernel IP routing table Destination Gateway Genmask Flags Metric Ref Use Iface 192.168.1.1 0.0.0.0 255.255.255.255 UH 0 0 0 eth0 198.147.221.1 0.0.0.0 255.255.255.255 UH 0 0 0 ppp0 192.168.1.0 0.0.0.0 255.255.255.0 U 0 0 0 eth0 127.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 255.0.0.0 U 0 0 0 lo 0.0.0.0 198.147.221.1 0.0.0.0 UG 0 0 0 ppp0
That looks OK (sorry about the long delay.) Are you running a caching nameserver?
Yes. I have caching-namserver 6.0-2 installed. When I "rpm -V" to figure out what files I've changed, I have only changed /etc/named.conf and /var/named/named.local. Hmm, I didn't change the latter but "rpm -V" gives S.5....T -- my change to /etc/named.conf was to add the lines: // logging interval -- 12 hours statistics-interval 720; My resolv.conf has: search xnet.com nameserver 127.0.0.1 nameserver <ISP nameserver #1> nameserver <ISP nameserver #2> I keep intending to change this to only the first one, and make named a forwarding nameserver. None of this, however, changes the fact that when starting Netscape, it generates some lookup request that times out. Why do newer versions of Netscape need to generate any name lookups for opening a file:// URL? Previous versions of Netscape did not do this. I fully expect my named to time out when a name lookup request is made and when I am not connected to my ISP (via ppp). My complaint is that Netscape is generating a nameserver request when it doesn't need to. Admittedly, in addition to fixing Netscape, it would work to fix my nameserver somehow to immediately reject all requests when I am not connected to the Net.
Hmm... looking in both the netscape resources and the binary itself, there doesn't seem to be a way to disable this. Perhaps try: MOZILLA_NO_ASYNC_DNS=1 netscape but I don't know if that will help. If that doesn't I can't think of a good solution, because the 'no route to host' timeout is the standard kernel networking timeout.