Re: [Lynx-dev] "Alert!: Unable to connect to remote host."

[Stef Caunter]

underscores, and it seems to be the way the various OSes do lookups.

Not noise, lynx does lookups differently than I expected, so I'm 
learning something here. If there is a dns record (there is), then the OS isn't 
handling it properly. I can't see where lynx asks the OS though.

I can't find any treatment that calls an underscore invalid in 
LYGetHostByName. lynx does not use gethostbyname(), and it is using w3c HTTPC.c 
code. Nevertheless, something makes it not find the A record.

DNS does allow underscores in certain cases, to prepend TXT and SRV records, 
such as Domain Key signing key distribution TXT records.
Microsoft Active Directory "DNS domains" allows them. Apparently, you can use 
them in hostnames and have it work. I don't know if that is ok with the rfcs 
(wonder if it is a matter of contention... :)

dig on NetBSD returns an A record, dig uses resolv.h, which has a "sanity 
check" for names, but it finds underscores sane apparently.

squid on FreeBSD won't check this url either, so that's wget, lynx and 
squid on BSD. NetBSD ftp and telnet client won't check it. linux ftp and 
telnet will.

I know Henry uses NetBSD, and Philip uses linux (could this be a header issue?) 
- just checked on RHE and it looks it up ok. So it seems to be BSD.

Guess I could post over on NetBSD unless someone else volunteers...

__Stef
http://caunter.ca/contact.html

On Tue, 5 Dec 2006, Henry Nelson wrote:

> > > I'm trying to connect to "http://running_on_alcohol.tripod.com/id4.html";,
> > > but all I get is "Alert!: Unable to connect to remote host".
>
> Sorry for the noise.  It's some kind of DNS problem, but I can't see
> what's different from the Windows setup and the unix host.  Nslookup
> of "running_on_alcohol.tripod.com" yields an IP of 209.202.226.100,
> but trying to go to "http://209.202.226.100/id4.html"; ends up with a
> "Sorry, but the page or the file that you're looking for is not here."
> error.
>
> Wget from the same account also fails: "Resolving running_on_alcohol.tripod.com... 
> failed: Non-recoverable failure in name resolution."