Bit repo issues in Thailand, dreading the arrival of 11.4, and DNS resolver fail on Opera.

English Network/Internet
#1

For nearly a year any Suse install in Thailand would not connect to any of the official repos. Local DNS servers just NOT resolve them.

My workaround is to input the IP address directly for every Suse repo but it is a huge inconvenience, especially when installing rpms that rely on Suse repos - I just know they would fail and I would eventually have to copy-paste the IP address so I go through every step just waiting to get to the part where Yast gives up and I can help manually.

Same goes for packman.

Now, I understand 11.4 would introduce a new way or downloading software - getting blocks simultaneously from multiple repositories. Sounds great in theory but with a major DNS issue in this country I’m really worried it would all go bad.

I understand there used to be a Suse repo in Thailand and, perhaps, local DNS servers still point to it but it’s not there anymore.

From my experience there’s nothing worse than DNS problems arising from relying on localities, ie same name gives different addresses depending on what country you are in - no one can fix DNS records gone wrong, especially if the servers are in bizarre countries half the world away.

Can somebody educate me on the issue?

I hate to be the case of “Oh, your country is not supported, go away”. And then I’d go “Yeah, and your distro is not supported by Opera, so you go away, and remove it from your repos!” Disappointment all around.

Opera issue as per this thread:

Looking up hostname failure since 10.50+ - Opera for UNIX - Linux, Solaris, FreeBSD - Opera Community

Two 11.3 I have suffer from it, both from Suse repos. There’s a post somewhere on the second page talking details about clib package but noting definite.

#2

My apologies if I have a dissenting view.

Could this be your local location in Thailand?

My wife is Thai and I visit Thailand every year. I was in Thailand on 6-8-September, and then again from 12-23-September. When in Bangkok I stayed in Center Point Petchaburi and used the Hotel wireless. I was able to connect to the official repos and update my laptop running openSUSE-11.2 with no problem.

Then from 13-22 September I was in Phuket Thailand, and connecting to a house wireless, I was also to update to the official repos and update my laptop running openSUSE-11.2 with no problem. I do not type in the IP address directly. I simply use what is in 11.2 and I do no special edits. None.

I believe you should recheck your diagnosis since I succeeded with this.

Did you quadruple check to confirm you have disabled ipv6 ? Could this not be another problem, since I succeeded during a short visit.

I’m back in Europe now, and not likely to visit Thailand for another year. In 7 years my wife and I will possibly retire then, but that’s a bit long to wait for me to arrive (in order to help you and others check again on a longer term basis).

#3

Futher to this, there are strange things I noted while in Phuket.

When I went to my wife’s brother’s company office, and used their wireless, I was only able to connect to selected web sites, and I had the exact symtoms (more or less) that you described. On the other hand, when I was at my wife’s house using a wireless, and also in Bangkok using the Hotel wireless, I had no such problem.

I puzzled over this, but did not try to figure it out further.

Could it be that some Thai ISP’s cause a problem here, and some do not?

#4

For nearly a year any Suse install in Thailand would not connect to any of the official repos. Local DNS servers just NOT resolve them.

My workaround is to input the IP address directly for every Suse repo

So it seems to me that you can contact the destination; what happens when you use some non-local DNS server, like 8.8.8.8 ?

#5

There several ISPs in Thailand with several DNS servers, I’m on True in Bangkok, if it helps.

I admit I don’t know how OpenDNS or Google DNS would affect the repos, I know they screw up several localized sites that use “balanced load” something or other, meaning local DNS entries send the browser to a local address while 8.8.8.8 sends it to a different server in a different part of the world. Perhaps that would solve the repo problem but only as a diagnostic tool. Performance wise these DNS servers lag far behind local ones, too, at least according to some test I ran a few months ago.

How abut a reverse idea - can someone try my ISP server and see if it works with repos?

203.144.207.29
205.144.207.49

There are some other servers, too, but I don’t remember them off the top of my head.

#6

Ok, just checked, Google’s 8.8.8.8 is working, as expected. I added a new repo and it reached the repo server, downloaded stuff etc, updated all other enabled repos - nothing to complain.

Let’s see what issues, if any, it would give me with general surfing.

Is there any way to correct DNS entries on my ISP servers 'cos that’s where the original problem apparently lies?