GNOME applications delay to start

[Indy]

When I set a domain name for my computer through network-admin, every application that had to do with gnome itself, and gtk libraries (such as gnome-terminal, xterm, or Open Home Folder) delayed very much to start. I searched it, and I found out that in /etc/hosts the name of my computer (my host name) was removed from 127.0.0.1. I added it again, and everything went back to normal (all applications started in good time).

[Siegfried Gevatter (rainct)]

Thanks for your report. So you are suggesting that there should be some protection against the localhost line getting removed from there?

[Indy (indy90-deactivatedaccount)]

I can't even think of a logical reason why your hostname should get removed from the 127.0.0.1 line :-)

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Thank you for your bug. What version of Ubuntu do you use? Could you describe easy steps to trigger the bug?

[Indy (indy90-deactivatedaccount)]

I use Ubuntu 7.04 Feisty Fawn, but I also encountered this error in Ubuntu 6.10 Edgy Eft. To reproduce the bug, start network-admin go to the "General" tab, and set a "Domain name". Then, try to start an application such as "gnome-terminal", or try to open "Home Folder" form the "Places" menu. You will notice the delay until the application starts. Check /etc/hosts to see what happened there. Good luck in fixing the bug, and thank you.

[astupidog (ori-kelevtipesh)]

I also encountered this bug. It is extremely annoying and difficult to find the fix to it.

Besides delay when opening applications from the gnome menus/desktop, I also had long delays when openning the midnight commander from terminal or just the midnight commander editor (mcedit), some strange delays / random freezes while editing messages in Evolution - all fixed when I added the hostname back to the hosts file.

All this started when I was trying to get samba to work, so I guess I added the workgroup in the network-admin, however I wasn't able to reproduce the bug this way again.

Anyway, it's very easy to reproduce the bug by simply deleting your hostname from the hosts file.

[Sesheron (tigertron)]

I want to make sure I have this straight.
At the top of /etc/hosts, it should look like this:

127.0.0.1 localhost
127.0.0.1 ::mycompnamehere::

before I changed it to that, I had long app
loading time. Before I changed it, the line
next to my computer's name was:

127.0.1.1 ::compnamehere::

I am hoping this should fix the long delay
when loading the desktop after login.

[Aristotelis Mikropoulos (amikrop)]

I also hope that the delay during loading desktop is fixed, and I can confirm that it is encountered only in Gutsy, and not in Feisty neither in former versions.

[DaveC (dcrooke)]

I ran into the same problem on Ubuntu 7.10 / 64 bit ... looks like some kind of funkified host lookup.

Note that it is considered very bad TCP/IP practice to put your own hostname on 127.0.0.1 .... Ubuntu seems to do a hack and add a line for 127.0.1.1 to /etc/hosts, which I removed as being also non-canonical IP networking - I put it back for now. I am planning to deploy a DNS server on my home LAN which, I suspect, will tame it, but it would be good if the developers removed this lookup from the code.

[Pedro Villavicencio (pedro)]

Is someone experiencing the same issue with Hardy or Intrepid?

[Pedro Villavicencio (pedro)]

We are closing this bug report because it lacks the information we need to investigate the problem, as described in the previous comments. Please reopen it if you can give us the missing information, and don't hesitate to submit bug reports in the future. To reopen the bug report you can click on the current status, under the Status column, and change the Status back to New. Thanks again!.

[DaveC (dcrooke)]

Hi Pedro

Let me know if you'd like me to dig further and figure out what it's doing.

The use of an entry in /etc/hosts that says "127.0.0.1 <hostname>" is a bad
practice in TCP/IP, it would be nice if Ubuntu did not have to do this.

Cheers
Dave

On Mon, Sep 15, 2008 at 3:45 PM, Pedro Villavicencio <email address hidden>wrote:

> We are closing this bug report because it lacks the information we need
> to investigate the problem, as described in the previous comments.
> Please reopen it if you can give us the missing information, and don't
> hesitate to submit bug reports in the future. To reopen the bug report
> you can click on the current status, under the Status column, and change
> the Status back to New. Thanks again!.
>
> ** Changed in: gnome-system-tools (Ubuntu)
> Status: Incomplete => Invalid
>
> --
> GNOME applications delay to start
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/128521
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of the bug.
>
> Status in "gnome-system-tools" source package in Ubuntu: Invalid
>
> Bug description:
> When I set a domain name for my computer through network-admin, every
> application that had to do with gnome itself, and gtk libraries (such as
> gnome-terminal, xterm, or Open Home Folder) delayed very much to start. I
> searched it, and I found out that in /etc/hosts the name of my computer (my
> host name) was removed from 127.0.0.1. I added it again, and everything
> went back to normal (all applications started in good time).
>