General "Resolving Host" Issue

Bob · 20-07-2015, 23:01

Evening all.

I'm at home with the parents for a couple of day and was looking forward to making use of their super duper connection.

However, all day today I've been having issues connecting to pretty much every website. The browser keeps getting stuck on "Resolving Host" and then eventually the page loads. Sometimes it's not an issue and just when I think it's sorted, it started happening again.

Curiously, it's only my MacBook that has these issues. My HTC One M8 has no problems whatsoever.

They have Superhub 2ac.

I'm curious to understand what's happening and hopefully find a solution

Kushan · 20-07-2015, 23:33

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bob

Evening all.

I'm at home with the parents for a couple of day and was looking forward to making use of their super duper connection.

However, all day today I've been having issues connecting to pretty much every website. The browser keeps getting stuck on "Resolving Host" and then eventually the page loads. Sometimes it's not an issue and just when I think it's sorted, it started happening again.

Curiously, it's only my MacBook that has these issues. My HTC One M8 has no problems whatsoever.

They have Superhub 2ac.

I'm curious to understand what's happening and hopefully find a solution

Check your DNS settings.

Bob · 20-07-2015, 23:39

Turns out it's a problem with Macs and Yosemite.

Restarting your machine and holding P+R+Ctrl+Command until you hear the Apple start up tone twice, seems to resolve the issue. This took some tracking down!

Kushan · 20-07-2015, 23:43

I thought they were supposed to just work?

Bob · 20-07-2015, 23:47

Indeed. Well at least it's resolved

Kushan · 20-07-2015, 23:51

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bob

Indeed. Well at least it's resolved

Ba dum tish!

Bob · 20-07-2015, 23:57

That was unintentional I swear

qasdfdsaq · 21-07-2015, 11:49

Interesting how Macs have now evolved to the point that BIOS settings can break DNS resolution.

horseman · 23-07-2015, 04:48

Quote:

Originally Posted by qasdfdsaq

Interesting how Macs have now evolved to the point that BIOS settings can break DNS resolution.

More interesting that PPC Macs have evolved into Intel Macs that run (U)EFI and don't have BIOS per se!

Even more interesting if the OP has effected a permanent solution by resetting his NVRAM. The symptoms he described imho point more towards the new "discoverd" that initially replaced the "mdnsresponder" service in first 3 point releases of 10.10
That has been redacted in 10.10.4 by regressing back to previous legacy "mdnsresponder" again.

So if the OP joins a Yosemite network at any future time then he may find that pre 10.10.4 releases may effectively cause "bonjour cache" poisoning in addition to a myriad of strange anomalies including WiFi connectivity issues.

Time will tell.....

qasdfdsaq · 23-07-2015, 12:30

Quote:

Originally Posted by horseman

More interesting that PPC Macs have evolved into Intel Macs that run (U)EFI and don't have BIOS per se!

Yes, indeed. BIOSes have evolved into EFIs, EEPROMs have evolved into generic NVRAM and DNS resolvers have evolved into finicky things that can be broken by parts of the system that used to be involved in just loading the boot code.

That said, Apple EFIs do include the ability to connect to wired and wireless networks and bootstrap an OS over the internet so I suppose there needs to be a DNS resolver in there somewhere.

Quote:

Even more interesting if the OP has effected a permanent solution by resetting his NVRAM. The symptoms he described imho point more towards the new "discoverd" that initially replaced the "mdnsresponder" service in first 3 point releases of 10.10
That has been redacted in 10.10.4 by regressing back to previous legacy "mdnsresponder" again.

So if the OP joins a Yosemite network at any future time then he may find that pre 10.10.4 releases may effectively cause "bonjour cache" poisoning in addition to a myriad of strange anomalies including WiFi connectivity issues.

Time will tell.....

Good explanation! If a little cryptic, as usual

Bob · 23-07-2015, 16:40

As it turns out, it wasn't a permanent solution. It started happening again the next day a couple of hours into use. I've been on 10.10.4 since the very first day I got my MacBook and upgraded.

I hadn't encountered these issue on my usually wireless network at home, or on our internal WiFi at work.

Kushan · 23-07-2015, 17:17

A permanent solution would be to install windows.