Crash in gethostbyname() on congruent usage

[Laurent Bercot]

> The thread you referenced is all silly; it's a rant about an
> implementation detail (NSS) of glibc that does not even apply to
> uClibc. If you want to lookup hostnames, you use getaddrinfo.

 Whether or not NSS is a glibc implementation detail, getaddrinfo() was
designed to accommodate NSS, and because of that, it is a horrible API
to perform DNS, with focus on details totally irrelevant to DNS and no
way to access and tune important DNS engine knobs. The most obvious flaw
is that it is a blocking, synchronous call that performs network
operations with no way of specifying a timeout. It's only the first one.


> Consider a system behind a restrictive firewall with no access to DNS
> except possibly for a local intranet, and minimal outgoing access at
> all. A resolver module that caches results locally and routes unknown
> requests over a special protocol is perfectly reasonable.

 Yes, but DNS proxying should be done by the *resolver program*, not by
the *client library*. Special-purpose resolvers exist ; no system
architecture needs proxying at the client library level. And in any
case, no system architecture can be justification for bad API design.

-- 
 Laurent