pages tagged Google Earthrohieb.namehttps://rohieb.name/blag/tag/Google_Earth/rohieb.nameikiwiki2013-09-19T05:04:01ZGoogle Earth and IPv6 DNS lookupshttps://rohieb.name/blag/post/google-earth-and-ipv6-dns-lookups/rohieb
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2013-09-19T05:04:01Z2011-01-22T12:02:00Z
<p>Apparently the combination of a WLAN router that blocks IPv6 DNS queries
of type <code>AAAA</code> (in my case, it was a Siemens S1621-Z220-A sold as <a href="http://www.alice-wiki.de/Alice_Modem_1121_WLAN">Alice
Modem 1121 WLAN</a>) and the current version of Google Earth for Linux (I am
using 5.1.3533.1731 from <a href="http://www.medibuntu.org/">Medibuntu</a>) do not work well together. The
problem is that the router simply throws away <code>AAAA</code> queries (or
generally, any type it does not know), so the DNS query times out.
However, Google Earth does not seem to fall back to IPv4 queries (type
<code>A</code>) in this case, and shows a message about network connectivity errors.
I don’t know if it’s Google Earth’s fault or if the underlying eglibc
resolver of my Linux system does something wrong, anyhow there is a
fairly well-commented <a href="https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/eglibc/+bug/417757">bug report</a> on Launchpad for Ubuntu Karmic and
Lucid which explains the issue.</p>
<p>Anyway, I got rid of the problem by manually configuring a nameserver on
my local machine (for example the nameserver(s) of your internet
provider, or the ones of OpenDNS), and not using the WLAN router as a
resolver. NetworkManager allows you to do this by editing a connection
and choosing “Automatic DHCP (Addresses only)” on the IPv4 register tab;
or you can write the settings directly to your <code>/etc/resolv.conf</code> (here
for the OpenDNS servers):</p>
<pre><code>nameserver 208.67.222.222
nameserver 208.67.220.220
</code></pre>