Re: [Pan-users] Re: ANN: Pan 0.101 "A pulse of dying power in a clenching plastic fist."

[walt]

David Kelly wrote:
> 
> On Jun 25, 2006, at 4:15 PM, walt wrote:
> 
>> Artur Jachacy wrote:
>>> On Sun, 25 Jun 2006 14:45:11 -0500, David Kelly wrote:
>>>> Also note that I said, "localhost" and not 127.0.0.1, as I configured
>>>> it as localhost, not by number, altho both should be the same.
>>
>>> Changing the address to 'localhost' helped. Thanks for the tip!
>>
>> Do you know about the /etc/hosts file?  That is where the mapping
>> from IP address to host-name occurs (on your local network).
> 
> But by-number should bypass name lookup. Come to think of it without
> looking at Pans's source typical implementations do a DNS lookup first,
> if that fails tries to interpret the address as a number. Maybe WinXP or
> something else is faking DNS entries for numbers such as 127.0.0.1 which
> prevent the number from working?

I'm just popping random ideas off the top of my head because I don't
know any answers:  I know that that the 'hosts' file has been used as
a way to map spammers' websites (e.g. doubleclick) onto your own local
machine as a way to prevent ads from displaying in your web browser.

Now, what if doubleclick (or some other Black Hat) managed to add an
entry to your 'hosts' file which mapped '127.0.0.1' back onto their own
server?  (Is this even possible?  Dunno.)  But it might explain why a
request to '127.0.0.1:119' would fail to respond to an NNTP request,
while a request to 'localhost:119' would succeed.

You might also compare 'netstat -a' with 'netstat -an' (from a DOS-
prompt) to see if the numbers match up with the host names.