1.5.0.6 and "Server not found" is still with us

Discussion of bugs in Mozilla Firefox
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dickvl
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Post by dickvl »

Can you always reach a site in Fx if you use the IP version?
Use http://www.dnsstuff.com/
The field on the top (<del>left</del>) right "DNS Lookup" to get IP of a site and see what results you get if yo use that IP in the url bar.

If that still doesn't work then your ISP might react slowly to requsts.
Last edited by dickvl on September 18th, 2006, 2:27 pm, edited 1 time in total.
VanillaMozilla
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Post by VanillaMozilla »

Maggott,
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Resetting_preferences . Look for file "user.js". See also "Software that changes preference settings".
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dickvl
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Post by dickvl »

If you use a google search as a test then you should disable link prefetch, just to be precise: network.prefetch-next -> false
Google prefetches the first link.
Howard Lee
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Joined: August 22nd, 2006, 12:12 pm
Location: Toronto

Post by Howard Lee »

I also get the Server not found message regularly and for some time now - I have no firewall, just s simple set up at home.
Any suggestions?
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trolly
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Post by trolly »

One of the "best" solutions is to install a local DNS. http://ntcanuck.com/
Think for yourself. Otherwise you have to believe what other people tell you.
A society based on individualism is an oxymoron. || Freedom is at first the freedom to starve.
Constitution says: One man, one vote. Supreme court says: One dollar, one vote.
IDontKnow
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Post by IDontKnow »

Thanks guys, it looks like you are really trying.

BUT: did I mention that I have an ISDN dial up? This means I change ISP's 5x a day as the tariffs change.

The track of the 2 sec time-out looks weird. Where is the standard 5 secs defined?

Hosts only has the one entry.

Downloaded, installed and ran HiJackThis without any noticable results.

Will follow the other suggestions and come back.

//AndyB
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dickvl
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Post by dickvl »

How is the ISDN connection setup: with DHCP or did you have to enter the IP and DNS settings in the Dialup setup?
IDontKnow
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Post by IDontKnow »

Sorry I had to run in a hurry last night - I managed to pour the beer into the keypad instead of the glass........

I installed treewalk and had to abort as it crashed/locked the PC within 5 seconds of allowing named.exe as server. And it doesn't work here, as I often change ISP.

And I hope all this will change soon as DSL is supposed to be available here in a few weeks. Sorry, but I am currently living in a third world country called Germany.

OK, so let's concentrate on the DNS translation, as this looks to be the offending party. I am not technical enough to understand the process and how FireFox is involved. What I understand is that when I click on a link or enter a name, it gets translated into a physical and numbered address, much like a telephone number, the IP address. This process is done via a look-up table and should take a few ms. So, FireFox transmits the name, gets back a number and looks up the contents of that address and displays it by interpreting HTML.

So far, so good. Now it seems that FireFox is NOT getting the physical address from time to time. Is it feasible that all my ISP's have wrong or faulty or unstable or warped DNS look-up tables? Unlikely.

Is it that I am one of the few slow-speed users? Not enough information.

Is it only happening when I click on multiple links? No, it happens randomly anytime, any address, whether clicking on a link or entering the name or even the IP-Address.

Am I running a proxy? No.
Am I involuntarily running a proxy? Not that can be established.

The hosts file does not cause a bottle-neck as it contains only one entry.

nslookup for Google works fine, on FireFox it can fail.
nslookup for a random site can fail, works on 2nd attempt (www.pupcity.com timeout after 2 secs, push F3 Enter and it finds it ok)

And this is where I suspect a screw-up. How does nslookup work? Does it use its own engine or does it use the default browser one? Or does it simply fire the string to the translation table and print what it gets back?

I just entered nslookup with a spelling error and received the same behaviour.

What else can I test to try and narrow this thing down?

Oh I just ran the puppyfind.com sequence in IE6 without a hiccup. The same on Opera. I'm starting to hate puppies.

//IDontKnow
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trolly
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Post by trolly »

Yup, living in more rural regions the internet connections are bad. Living in towns you can get now 16MBit DSL lines.
Which provider do you have? I have a 2MB DSL line from the pink ISP and have absolutely no problems.
Think for yourself. Otherwise you have to believe what other people tell you.
A society based on individualism is an oxymoron. || Freedom is at first the freedom to starve.
Constitution says: One man, one vote. Supreme court says: One dollar, one vote.
VanillaMozilla
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Post by VanillaMozilla »

This may help clarify some concepts.

IDontKnow wrote:So, FireFox transmits the name, gets back a number and looks up the contents of that address and displays it by interpreting HTML. ...Now it seems that FireFox is NOT getting the physical address from time to time.

Not exactly. If Fx does not have a cached result, it <i>asks the operating system (OS) to translate the address,</i> and it gets the IP address from the OS. (By default, Firefox cached entries expire within 1 minute.) If the OS does not have the address in its cache, it looks up the address on the Internet, using whatever DNS service is available. (The expiration times for the cached entries are highly variable.) <i>The network settings in your computer specify where to look first for domain name translation.</i>

IDontKnow wrote:How does nslookup work? Does it use its own engine or does it use the default browser one?

It doesn't even know about the browser. It's part of the operating system. Keep in mind that it too may simply use cached entries. And although it had a 2-second timeout, it looked like it was retrying automatically.

Please pay careful attention to DickVl's questions:
"Can you always reach a site in Fx if you use the IP version?
Use http://www.dnsstuff.com/
The field on the top left "DNS Lookup" to get IP of a site and see what results you get if yo use that IP in the url bar."

"How is the ISDN connection setup: with DHCP or did you have to enter the IP and DNS settings in the Dialup setup?"
IDontKnow
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Post by IDontKnow »

@ trolly: rural??? What rural??? 2 k's outside the ex-capital Bonn. In a large city - albeit connected via optical fibre and waiting for the mini-DSLAMs to get connected. Jeepers, any farm in South-Africa is better off than a modern metropolitan area here - due to the "expansion strategy" of the pink company.

But enough of that.

If Fx asks the OS to translate, where is this table? If it flushes the cache within a minute, why does it "find" the address after a few seconds when I push Try again? And why does nslookup fail at first and on second attempt - after 80 ms - do the same?

Ran the dnsstuff.com with my puppies. What a mouthfull. It's a bit much to post here. I get all passes except 3 warnings: 1. is that my nameservers are all class C. 2. is that the DNS servers don't accept TCP connections and 3. that my domain does not have an SPF record. Go figure.

I then ran my usual google search and entered some failed addresses into dnsstuff. They came back ok, except there was a different warning on one of them: WARNING: Your SOA REFRESH interval is : 900 seconds. This seems low.

Is this an indication? Does this apply to the answering side or my side?

I'm getting angry that I don't know enough about this to interpret a log like this.

The ISDN setup is done via New Connection Setup entering only access data and phone number. I do not have to enter any IP or DNS numbers. Does this automatically mean it's DHCP? I feel such an idiot....... At varsity they taught us about switching circuits and co-processors instead of IP principles. :-(
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dickvl
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Post by dickvl »

Yes that is DHCP.
Firefox has its own cache for DNS.
See these prefs in about:config
network.dnsCacheEntries : Determines the maximum number of entries to keep in the DNS cache. Default value is 20.
network.dnsCacheExpiration: Determines the maximum number of seconds to cache resolved DNS entries. Default value is 60.

After the cache expires Fx asks the OS again and if the DNS cache of the OS expires then the OS asks the DNS server again.
ipconfig /displaydns shows the content of the DNS cache (use: >file to save the output to a file)

dnsstuff: www.pupcity.com is really pupcity.com (64.34.170.137)
MaHubs
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Joined: August 13th, 2006, 11:13 am

Post by MaHubs »

My system has, by itself, progressed/regressed from getting the Try Again display to just crashing. I'll be reading a web site and several minutes into it (NOT immediately), Firefox will tel me it has encountered a problem and must close. This is happening more and more often. I wrote down the message it finally displayed (but won't let me copy!) and it has something to do with a Bucket Table.

You know, I didn't buy a computer to become a computer scientist. I installed Firefox several years ago because it was faster and better than IE. Now I'm having severe second thoughts. I am not going to spend several days diagnosing a problem that can probably be fixed by just reverting to IE.

I have written to my ISP's support dept about my problems but won't hear back probably until tomorrow.
VanillaMozilla
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Post by VanillaMozilla »

Sorry, MaHubs, for crashing you really need a different thread. That's a totally different problem. But FIRST try the Standard Diagnostic. See the Knowledge Base.
MaHubs
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Post by MaHubs »

I'm sorry I didn't realize about the thread issue, but I thought perhaps the fact that one symptom disappeared just as the other one appeared might be of interest to those who are trying to figure out the cause of the problem on this thread.....
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