Address not found when entering a sub-domain with hyphen at the end

[Ofir Klinger]

When entering to a sub-domain ending with a hyphen, Firefox and System->Administration->Network Tools says "Address not found".

The problem doesn't exists on Windows XP (tested with IE6, IE7 and Firefox) and on OSX with Firefox and Safari.

You can reproduce it with http://83-215-.googlegroups.com/ , if you get "Address not found" message - Walla!

If not, you will be redirected to http://groups.google.com/?pli=1

What is the problem? and How can it be solved?

Thanks in advanced

P.S
More info: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=6243857

[Ofir Klinger (klinger-ofir)]

There is a screenshot of the error screen in Firefox.

[Ofir Klinger (klinger-ofir)]

So, why this happening? Is there a way of finding the source of this bug?

[Ofir Klinger (klinger-ofir)]

Anything new about this bug?

[petski (petski)]

Just googled a bit and found https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=196852 (based on information in https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=365956).

[Ofir Klinger (klinger-ofir)]

But what the end-user is going to do if he had to use a site that violates the domain name standards? I mean, sometimes domain names will violate the RFC not because someone doesn't care about standards, but doesn't know about them. Moreover, I think that this isn't important. The most important thing is that users using Ubuntu will have the chance to view those sites the use illegal domain names.

I, personally, need to find a Windows computer every week in order to surf that site.

When I reported this bug in here, I also asked in the Google Groups forum about this error. They (not Google employees) said that the only solution is contact the group owner and ask him to change group's name. However, I don't have any contact with the owner, and therefore I am stuck.

The thread: http://groups.google.com/group/Is-Something-Broken/browse_thread/thread/136f15515ced25ca/d069bb3bbb986cd2?lnk=gst&q=hyphen#d069bb3bbb986cd2

I have to say that I feel some frustration, since the Firefox developers don't want to fix this, neither don't the Linux developers, and it seems that the Ubuntu developers have the same opinion.

[petski (petski)]

First, I'm not an Ubuntu developer :)

I looked at the firefox source code and found http://mxr.mozilla.org/firefox/source/netwerk/base/src/nsURLHelper.cpp#925

I also found LP #121467 which is seems to be the same issue as this one. Therefor I'm marking this one as a duplicate.