OESF Portables Forum

Model Specific Forums => Gemini PDA => Gemini PDA - Android => Topic started by: ChloeRed on May 18, 2018, 05:07:15 pm

Title: Network DNS weirdness
Post by: ChloeRed on May 18, 2018, 05:07:15 pm
Just had my gemini delivered today, set it up, but it appears to ignore the DHCP DNS settings.
Anyone else had this?
Server supports and DHCP/DHCPv6 hands out both IPv4 and IPv6 addresses, and every other device (window/linux/mac/android) devices do look ups fine.
Title: Network DNS weirdness
Post by: ArchiMark on May 18, 2018, 05:17:42 pm
WiFi worked OK for me...

Didn't do anything to set it up.
Title: Network DNS weirdness
Post by: ChloeRed on May 18, 2018, 07:19:28 pm
Quote from: ArchiMark
WiFi worked OK for me...

Didn't do anything to set it up.

Wifi works fine for me too, as long as I want to access something by IP, or external to the LAN.
But internal lookups fail, and I can't even find any request for them in the logs on the server.
Running network info II on the gemini reports the correct DNS servers, it just appears to ignore them and use 8.8.8.8 regardless.
Title: Network DNS weirdness
Post by: vader on May 18, 2018, 08:42:42 pm
Quote from: ChloeRed
Quote from: ArchiMark
WiFi worked OK for me...

Didn't do anything to set it up.

Wifi works fine for me too, as long as I want to access something by IP, or external to the LAN.
But internal lookups fail, and I can't even find any request for them in the logs on the server.
Running network info II on the gemini reports the correct DNS servers, it just appears to ignore them and use 8.8.8.8 regardless.

Surprisingly, 8.8.8.8 is google

To change it, you can do several things. First is configure the network interface as static. Give yourself a static ip at your router, then put the correct settings in the android wifi settings.

Pull down top bar, hold the wifi symbol, select modify, scroll down and select advanced, change from DHCP to static and fill in the boxes. If it is a home wifi, you have complete control so this should be easy to configure.

Second solution is to download one of the DNS changer apps from fdroid or google play (I would trust the fdroid one more....) This enables you to change the DNS. Settings depend on which one you choose.

Hope this helps.
Title: Network DNS weirdness
Post by: ChloeRed on May 19, 2018, 04:03:34 am
Yes, I know 8.8.8.8 is google.

I've tired it on static, and I get the same results - host unknown for anything internal, regardless of if you use hostname or the fqdn.

I think I'll just move it to linux so I can see what it's doing instead.
Title: Network DNS weirdness
Post by: butIamaspambot on May 19, 2018, 05:33:42 am
I recently read that the Chrome browser ignores etc/hosts contents and routes all DNS queries to Google's DNS (8.8.8.8 and others) Opera behaves similarly. I think this would explain your issues. I don't know which browser ships with the Gemini. Have you tried something else like Firefox?
Title: Network DNS weirdness
Post by: ChloeRed on May 19, 2018, 12:40:57 pm
Having the same issue with lemonssh. Going to just flash it over to linux.
Title: Network DNS weirdness
Post by: ChloeRed on May 19, 2018, 06:00:31 pm
Tried it with firefox, same.
Tried pinging from a terminal: host not found.
But also when I match the logs with the DNS server, there's no connection attempt at all.
When I change the network to static IP/DNS, the DNS server is filled out with 8.8.8.8. When you delete this, it automatically refills it with 8.8.8.8 on deleting the last (first) character.
I have to add in my DNS server first, then delete 8.8.8.8 from the end of it, so I'm suspecting that the google DNS server is actually hard coded in to the stack.

A device that can't use the assigned DNS server and connect to local machines by hostname will be pretty useless for me as a diag/light testing device, which is why I got it

Edit:
Got a result using DNS changer:
Even with the dhcp or static settings, the gemini still uses 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4, regardless of what the interface is showing.
Once it was looped back over an internal VPN to leave the gemini, it will use my servers.

So atm, utterly useless for what I want the unit to do.
Title: Network DNS weirdness
Post by: gidds on October 27, 2018, 11:46:30 am
FWIW, Chrome is a particular problem here.

I installed my own /etc/hosts file (on rooted Android, using Termux and vi).  I can tell that Android generally is using it, as shown by the ‘ping’ command and in Firefox.  But Chrome ignores it completely.  Searching the web suggests disabling ‘Safe Browsing’, ‘Use page predictions’, and Data Saver — and then clearing Chrome's cache (in chrome://net-internals/#dns).  So I've switched to Firefox, which behaves rather better in that respect!