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DNS failures (EAI_FAIL) on FreeBSD when only one loopback addr #1011
Description
This surfaced as a problem with npm install, npm/npm#7508
The bug seems to have been introduced in the 0.11 (now 0.12) node line, which io.js inherits.
I found some evidence that FreeBSD returns different error codes than Linux (EAI_FAIL instead of EAI_NONAME) on certain conditions, see this thread from the samba bug tracker: https://bugzilla.samba.org/attachment.cgi?id=8563&action=edit
I don't have a FreeBSD box to test this on. @msimerson has the FreeBSD box with the unusual setup (only using loopback network addresses)
Activity
bnoordhuis commentedon Mar 1, 2015
Okay, what I think happens here is that npm (in lib/utils/error-handler.js) expects ENOTFOUND but instead it gets EAI_FAIL.
lib/dns.js remaps some EAI errors to ENOTFOUND. It's debatable whether that should be done for EAI_FAIL because it means the DNS request failed altogether, not that no DNS entry exists.
On the other hand, lib/dns.js also remaps EAI_MEMORY for reasons I'm not entirely clear on. I probably just carried that over when libuv started returning error codes directly.
smikes commentedon Mar 1, 2015
Thanks for finding where
npmis expecting a specific error code. I will see if we can fix it (or at least, work around it) on thenpmside.othiym23 commentedon Mar 2, 2015
npm/npm@bcd4722 pulls that into the error handler. I'm helping! In a very very tiny way!
bnoordhuis commentedon Mar 11, 2015
@smikes @othiym23 Do you think io.js needs to do something here? If not, I move to close the issue.
othiym23 commentedon Mar 11, 2015
@bnoordhuis I'm +0 on closing this; the fact that this behavior is inconsistent between OSes is surprising / mildly annoying, but that's just how libuv is, I guess.
bnoordhuis commentedon Mar 11, 2015
So moved, closing.
@othiym23 Libuv just passes on the error from the system library. Other operating systems can return it as well (in theory - it's not a very common error but e.g. OS X's libresolv sometimes returns it.)