When I go to Yast ->network devices → network settings. The ‘Initialize Network Configuration’ window pops up and it starts working down the list of items to execute…
When it gets to ‘Read Hostname and DNS Configuration’ it hangs for 5 full minutes!.. argh… I have no idea why this happens… This is not a new behavior… but since I am in the network settings so rarely, I ignored the problem… Eventually it moves on and the config window comes up. This has been happening for a long time and it happens on all my machines…
I can ping the 4 DNS servers configured in /etc/resolv.conf… I dont think this is the issue as this behavior happens on my home machines as well as my work machines… Since it is a consistent behavior for me, I am surprised that evidently, other people arent seeing this same bahavior… I am puzzled what could be the issue here…
HA! after updating to opensuse 11.2 from a clean install, I discovered this issue had gone away… I use a large hosts file from http://www.mvps.org/winhelp2002/hosts.htm to avoid spammers etc… When I noticed the delay had gone away, I had not yet implemented the hosts file, and the one I had in place was virtually empty due to the new install… For whatever reason, the network settings application doesnt like that large hosts file with all the 0.0.0.0 ip addresses…