`open-network-stream' in `nntp-open-network-stream': strange behaviour

[Christoph Conrad <christoph.conrad@gmx.de>]

Hi!

Linux 2.2.14, i386, Emacs 20.7.1, latest CVS Oort Gnus.

I have the following problem since a few weeks now, a workaround i found
now is at the end of the mail.

When `open-network-stream' failed ONE time for a given host (cause i am
not online, host overloaded etc.), it fails forever in the same emacs
session. If i restart my Emacs, it works again.

This behaviour is ONLY as described when the hostname is a symbolic name
like "News.CIS.DFN.DE". When i always resolve the name to an ip address
before i give it as argument to `open-network-stream', it works again
after having failed.

I know that this isn't a genuine Gnus problem, it might be a problem of
`open-network-stream' or even my network configuration. Maybe you could
give me a hint. With the workaround below it works as expected.

(defun cc-resolve-address( domain )
  (save-excursion
    (let ((output-buf (generate-new-buffer " *resolve-address*")))
      (unwind-protect
          (progn
            (set-buffer output-buf)
            (and (eq (call-process
                      "/usr/bin/nslookup" nil output-buf nil
                      "-retries=1" domain)
                     0)
                 (> (point-max) 2)
                 (goto-char (point-max))
                 (when (re-search-backward (concat "^Name: [ ]*"
                                                   domain
                                                   "\n"
                                                   "Address: [ ]*\\(.*\\)$")
                                           nil t)
                   (match-string 1))))
        ;; unwind-protect cleanup
        (kill-buffer output-buf)))))

(defun nntp-open-network-stream( buffer )
  (let ( (host nntp-address) )
    (when (not (string-match "[0-9]+\.[0-9]+\.[0-9]+\.[0-9]+"
                             host))
      (setq host (cc-resolve-address host)))
    (if host
        (open-network-stream "nntpd" buffer host nntp-port-number)
      ;; kill buffer due to a possible bug in nntp-open-connection
      (kill-buffer buffer)
      (error "nntp-open-network-stream: couldn't resolve %s" nntp-address))))


Best regards,
cu, -cc-
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