DNS problem with GNOME, fine in KDE

pickarooney · 11-19-2008, 04:47 PM

I have a Kubuntu installation and have recently added gnome-desktop, with a view to gradually switching over to GNOME.
Since I installed it, I'm unable to surf the web with Firefox or Opera. When I put an www.-style address in the address bar, Firefox will search hopelessly for it indefinitely (no error messages). Opera will take up to 10 minutes to load a page. If I enter the IP address of a site, Firefox goes straight to it.
Lynx goes straight to www.-style addresses.

Everything works fine in FF and Opera in KDE on the main machine.

I'm assuming it's some sort of DNS issue, but can't figure out why the behaviour would be different in each desktop environment and why the browsers don't simply give errors instead of continually trying to connect to sites.

pickarooney · 11-20-2008, 02:02 PM

I get this from the command line when I try to run any graphical browser (lynx works fine!)

Code:

/usr/lib/libkdeui.so.4: undefined symbol:
_ZN7KGlobal23unregisterStaticDeleterEP18KStaticDeleterBase
/usr/lib/kde3/plugins/styles/baghira.so could not be unloaded

** (galeon:17724): WARNING **: I could not load the bookmarks file, will
load the default bookmarks from
/usr/share/galeon/default-bookmarks.xbel.

** (galeon:17724): CRITICAL **: radio_group_set_from_value: assertion
`action != NULL' failed
galeon: symbol lookup error: /usr/lib/libkdeui.so.4: undefined symbol:
_ZN7KGlobal23unregisterStaticDeleterEP18KStaticDeleterBase

It looks like apps in GNOME are trying to use KDE components (baghira theme and maybe some KDE DNS tool?)

Does anyone know of some kind of trace or debug I can run to see where the signal is getting lost?

billymayday · 11-20-2008, 02:07 PM

From the command line, try

dig www.somthing.com

and see if DNS is working OK

salasi · 11-20-2008, 02:16 PM

Quote:

It looks like apps in GNOME are trying to use KDE components (baghira theme and maybe some KDE DNS tool?)

...while it would be a surprise for 'pure' (ie, not trying to run a kde app) Gnome to be trying to use a KDE app or library, it needn't necessarily be a problem, provided that the library itself is there to run. As you have kde, it probably is, though you could check.

Quote:

I'm assuming it's some sort of DNS issue

I think that's true. The first test is can you ping-by-ip, followed rapidly by can you ping-by-www-string.

Are you using any kind of ppp? Or DHCP? There is some messing around with IP addresses that goes along with either of those. Have a look at resolv.conf, to see if that looks to make sense, but be aware that something else may be messing around with resolv.conf while your net connection is active.

(And the thing I usually forget; only run either IPV4 or IPV6, not both. A side effect of running both seems to be that you have to wait for the 'bad' one to time out before you try the 'good' one and that can take some time.)

pickarooney · 11-20-2008, 04:15 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by salasi

...while it would be a surprise for 'pure' (ie, not trying to run a kde app) Gnome to be trying to use a KDE app or library, it needn't necessarily be a problem, provided that the library itself is there to run. As you have kde, it probably is, though you could check.

I think that's true. The first test is can you ping-by-ip, followed rapidly by can you ping-by-www-string.

Are you using any kind of ppp? Or DHCP? There is some messing around with IP addresses that goes along with either of those. Have a look at resolv.conf, to see if that looks to make sense, but be aware that something else may be messing around with resolv.conf while your net connection is active.

(And the thing I usually forget; only run either IPV4 or IPV6, not both. A side effect of running both seems to be that you have to wait for the 'bad' one to time out before you try the 'good' one and that can take some time.)

Resolv.conf has nothing unusual in it and pings by Ip and www-string both work, although particularly quickly.

I think you're onto something with the last bit, as when I ran opera in dnsdebug mode it spent ages faffing about with ipv6 before it tried ipv4 and eventually loaded a page.

How do I disable ipv6? (or 4, whichever is best)?

pickarooney · 11-21-2008, 01:29 AM

I tried editing /etc/modprobe.d/aliases and changing the line

alias net-pf-10 ipv6'

to

'alias net-pf-10 off

I thought it was going to work, too, but no

Curiously, Opera still seems to be trying to find an ipv6 route to websites, using the dnsdebug flag I get this as output:

Code:

: Resolving 'sitecheck2.opera.com'
dns: Trying IPv6 lookup for host 'sitecheck2.opera.com'...
dns: Thread created
dns: Resolving 'www.orange.fr'
dns: Trying IPv6 lookup for host 'www.orange.fr'...
dns: Thread created
dns: gethostbyname failed with return value 22 (Invalid argument).
hostent pointer:(nil)
dns: Trying IPv4 lookup for host 'sitecheck2.opera.com'...
dns: gethostbyname failed with return value 22 (Invalid argument).
hostent pointer:(nil)
dns: Trying IPv4 lookup for host 'www.orange.fr'...
dns: gethostbyname succeeded
dns: Host name lookup completed with error code 0
dns: Host 'sitecheck2.opera.com' resolved to 213.236.208.60
dns: gethostbyname succeeded
dns: Host name lookup completed with error code 0
dns: Host 'www.orange.fr' resolved to 193.252.122.103
dns: Resolving 'i5.woopic.com'
dns: Trying IPv6 lookup for host 'i5.woopic.com'...
dns: Thread created
dns: gethostbyname failed with return value 22 (Invalid argument).
hostent pointer:(nil)
dns: Trying IPv4 lookup for host 'i5.woopic.com'...
dns: gethostbyname succeeded
dns: Host name lookup completed with error code 0
dns: Host 'i5.woopic.com' resolved to 193.252.149.29
dns: Resolving 'orange.fr'
dns: Trying IPv6 lookup for host 'orange.fr'...
dns: Thread created
dns: Host name lookup of 'orange.fr' cancelled
dns: Resolving 'rc.production.orangeads.fr'
dns: Trying IPv6 lookup for host 'rc.production.orangeads.fr'...
dns: Thread created
dns: gethostbyname failed with return value 22 (Invalid argument).
hostent pointer:(nil)
dns: Trying IPv4 lookup for host 'orange.fr'...
dns: gethostbyname succeeded
dns: Host name lookup completed with error code 0
dns: Host 'orange.fr' resolved to 193.252.122.103
dns: gethostbyname failed with return value 22 (Invalid argument).
hostent pointer:(nil)
dns: Trying IPv4 lookup for host 'rc.production.orangeads.fr'...
dns: gethostbyname succeeded
dns: Host name lookup completed with error code 0
dns: Host 'rc.production.orangeads.fr' resolved to 193.252.121.71
dns: Resolving 'orange.weborama.fr'
dns: Trying IPv6 lookup for host 'orange.weborama.fr'...
dns: Thread created
dns: Resolving 'ad.fr.doubleclick.net'
dns: Trying IPv6 lookup for host 'ad.fr.doubleclick.net'...
dns: Thread created
dns: gethostbyname failed with return value 22 (Invalid argument).
hostent pointer:(nil)
dns: Trying IPv4 lookup for host 'orange.weborama.fr'...
dns: gethostbyname succeeded
dns: Host name lookup completed with error code 0
dns: Host 'orange.weborama.fr' resolved to 217.117.154.5
dns: gethostbyname failed with return value 22 (Invalid argument).
hostent pointer:(nil)
dns: Trying IPv4 lookup for host 'ad.fr.doubleclick.net'...
dns: gethostbyname succeeded
dns: Host name lookup completed with error code 0
dns: Host 'ad.fr.doubleclick.net' resolved to 209.62.179.57
dns: Resolving 'view.atdmt.com'
dns: Trying IPv6 lookup for host 'view.atdmt.com'...
dns: Thread created
dns: Resolving 'fluxlc.orange.fr'
dns: Trying IPv6 lookup for host 'fluxlc.orange.fr'...
dns: Thread created

Should I try blacklisting the module? I still don't get why this issue wouldn't apply to KDE though.
Also, I did a similar thing (installing Ubuntu over KDE) on my laptop recently and had no such trouble.

salasi · 11-21-2008, 05:55 AM

There are a number of places where something about ipv6 could be hiding (very pragmatically, ipv6 may be 'better' than 'ipv4', but ipv4 should be easier to get going, unless you know that you have ipv6 support from your isp).

All of the following in /etc
nsswitch.conf
resolv.conf
hosts
host.conf

..be very careful about anything that looks like:

Code:

### BEGIN INFO
#
# Modified_by:  NetworkManager
# Process:      /usr/bin/NetworkManager
# Process_id:   2830
#
### END INFO

because it means that a stack of configurations are being maintained (in this case by kde network manager, although it could be ppp, dhcp)...its not that this is bad, per se, its just that it makes it harder to know where you stand when you are debugging.

If that doesn't bring on enlightenment, have a look at the same files while kde and networking are running to see if it has done something like the above to get networking going.

pickarooney · 11-22-2008, 03:13 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by salasi

All of the following in /etc
nsswitch.conf
resolv.conf
hosts
host.conf

I'm not really sure what I'm looking for - only hosts.conf seems to mention ipv6. I'll post each file.

nsswitch.conf

Code:

# /etc/nsswitch.conf
#
# Example configuration of GNU Name Service Switch functionality.
# If you have the `glibc-doc-reference' and `info' packages installed, try:
# `info libc "Name Service Switch"' for information about this file.

passwd:         compat
group:          compat
shadow:         compat

hosts:          files mdns4_minimal [NOTFOUND=return] dns mdns4
networks:       files

protocols:      db files
services:       db files
ethers:         db files
rpc:            db files

netgroup:       nis

resolv.conf

Code:

search home
nameserver 192.168.1.1

hosts

Code:

127.0.0.1 localhost
127.0.1.1 marklar.home marklar

# The following lines are desirable for IPv6 capable hosts
::1 ip6-localhost ip6-loopback
fe00::0 ip6-localnet
ff00::0 ip6-mcastprefix
ff02::1 ip6-allnodes
ff02::2 ip6-allrouters
ff02::3 ip6-allhosts

host.conf

Code:

# The "order" line is only used by old versions of the C library.
multi off

Anything incriminating in there?

"marklar" is the name of my machine, BTW.

pickarooney · 11-22-2008, 04:11 AM

latest update: Opera now works fine in Gnome....
I didn't change anything in the meantime.

Weird.......