It seems gethostbyname(3) fails if the answer returned is too big, for example "chat.freenode.net" contains a lot of records that will easily trigger this.
This was introduced as part of the asr libc resolver rewrite. $ ping chat.freenode.net ping: unknown host: chat.freenode.net $ host chat.freenode.net | wc -l 22 $ I've doubled the value for MAXALIASES/MAXADDRS, which is closer to the original of 35 (..in the Attic) ok? Index: gethostnamadr_async.c =================================================================== RCS file: /cvs/src/lib/libc/asr/gethostnamadr_async.c,v retrieving revision 1.34 diff -u -p -u -r1.34 gethostnamadr_async.c --- gethostnamadr_async.c 16 Jan 2015 16:48:51 -0000 1.34 +++ gethostnamadr_async.c 1 Mar 2015 22:52:17 -0000 @@ -41,8 +41,8 @@ #include "asr_private.h" -#define MAXALIASES 16 -#define MAXADDRS 16 +#define MAXALIASES 32 +#define MAXADDRS 32 struct hostent_ext { struct hostent h;