Core Java

InetAddressImpl#lookupAllHostAddr slow/hangs

Since I upgraded to Yosemite I’ve noticed that attempts to resolve localhost on my home network have been taking ages (sometimes over a minute) so I thought I’d try and work out why.

This is what my initial /etc/hosts file looked like based on the assumption that my machine’s hostname was teetotal:

$ cat /etc/hosts
##
# Host Database
#
# localhost is used to configure the loopback interface
# when the system is booting.  Do not change this entry.
##
127.0.0.1	localhost
255.255.255.255	broadcasthost
::1             localhost
#fe80::1%lo0	localhost
127.0.0.1	wuqour.local
127.0.0.1       teetotal

I setup a little test which replicated the problem:

import java.net.InetAddress;
import java.net.UnknownHostException;
 
public class LocalhostResolution
{
    public static void main( String[] args ) throws UnknownHostException
    {
        long start = System.currentTimeMillis();
        InetAddress localHost = InetAddress.getLocalHost();
        System.out.println(localHost);
        System.out.println(System.currentTimeMillis() - start);
    }
}

which has the following output:

Exception in thread "main" java.net.UnknownHostException: teetotal-2: teetotal-2: nodename nor servname provided, or not known
	at java.net.InetAddress.getLocalHost(InetAddress.java:1473)
	at LocalhostResolution.main(LocalhostResolution.java:9)
	at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method)
	at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(NativeMethodAccessorImpl.java:57)
	at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:43)
	at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:606)
	at com.intellij.rt.execution.application.AppMain.main(AppMain.java:134)
Caused by: java.net.UnknownHostException: teetotal-2: nodename nor servname provided, or not known
	at java.net.Inet6AddressImpl.lookupAllHostAddr(Native Method)
	at java.net.InetAddress$1.lookupAllHostAddr(InetAddress.java:901)
	at java.net.InetAddress.getAddressesFromNameService(InetAddress.java:1293)
	at java.net.InetAddress.getLocalHost(InetAddress.java:1469)
	... 6 more

Somehow my hostname has changed to teetotal-2 so I added the following entry to /etc/hosts:

127.0.0.1	teetotal-2

Now if we run the program we see this output instead:

teetotal-2/127.0.0.1
5011

It’s still taking 5 seconds to resolve which is much longer than I’d expect. After break pointing through the code it seems like it’s trying to do an IPv6 resolution rather than IPv4 so I added an /etc/hosts entry for that too:

::1             teetotal-2

Now resolution is much quicker:

teetotal-2/127.0.0.1
6

Happy days!

Reference: InetAddressImpl#lookupAllHostAddr slow/hangs from our JCG partner Mark Needham at the Mark Needham Blog blog.
Subscribe
Notify of
guest

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

0 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
Back to top button