Since a few days, the DNS resolution stops working for random amounts of time, a few seconds to a few hours (I logged it with a simple script). It sometimes goes back to normal without any intervention, but comes back to normal after a reboot – not the cleanest way to solve this… My other machines on the same network don't have any problems.
How can I trace the problem ?
Here is what happens when the problem occurs:
ping www.google.com
ping: cannot resolve www.google.com: Unknown host
whois orange.fr
whois: fr.whois-servers.net: nodename nor servname provided, or not known
I searched my logs and found a lot of instances of this error message:
Jan 21 00:30:03 shiny.home helpd[66064]: dnssd_clientstub read_all(9) failed 0/4 0
Jan 21 00:30:03 shiny.home configd[17]: dnssd_clientstub read_all(27) failed 0/4 0
Jan 21 00:30:03 shiny.home mDNSResponder[40]: 17: ERROR: read_msg errno 40 (Message too long)
It think it may be related to a program I was evaluating recently (Daylite)
The DNS are the ones provided by my ISP, and the ethernet interface is setup via DHCP.
Best Answer
This Apple support article, Non-responsive DNS server or invalid DNS configuration can cause long delay before webpages load, may help: