DNS resolution issue in Alpine Linux 3.20. Ping/wget only work if nslookup first

[agwidarsito]

This is very strange behavior on a fresh installation of Alpine Linux v3.20.0 directly onto a VM.

When I try and ping or wget or even apk update, it will always fail to resolve the domain name unless I manually run an nslookup command first.

E.g.

localhost:~# ping mirrors.ustc.edu.cn
ping: bad address 'mirrors.ustc.edu.cn'                                       <------ BAD, cannot resolve address

localhost:~# nslookup mirrors.ustc.edu.cn
Server:         8.8.8.8
Address:        8.8.8.8:53

Non-authoritative answer:
Name:   mirrors.ustc.edu.cn
Address: 2001:da8:d800:95::110

Non-authoritative answer:
Name:   mirrors.ustc.edu.cn
Address: 202.141.160.110
Name:   mirrors.ustc.edu.cn
Address: 202.141.176.110                                                   <---- So I run nslookup on it, seems to work

localhost:~# ping mirrors.ustc.edu.cn
PING mirrors.ustc.edu.cn (202.141.160.110): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 202.141.160.110: seq=0 ttl=41 time=295.975 ms                <--------- Now I can ping?
64 bytes from 202.141.160.110: seq=1 ttl=41 time=295.963 ms
64 bytes from 202.141.160.110: seq=2 ttl=41 time=295.854 ms
64 bytes from 202.141.160.110: seq=3 ttl=41 time=295.946 ms

I'm not sure why this is happening - any ideas? It's so painful to even install packages because mirrors fail until I first run nslookup.

[agwidarsito]

Update: The exact same issue seems to happen on a fresh install of Alpine 3.18.0.

[mauromorales]

I'm getting the same issue on a qemu installation, Alpine 3.19 was working fine. One thing I do notice is that it seems to be using ipv6 by default, but not sure if this is somewhat related

[agwidarsito]

@mauromorales I thought it might have been related to IPv6 also.. I disabled it and still no luck sadly :(

[mauromorales]

Thanks for keeping me posted. Will try other things and update if I find something

[fossdd]

Did you run setup-interfaces?

[agwidarsito]

Do I need to do that even before I run setup-alpine? It seems even the installer cannot download from the mirrors some of the time :(

[mauromorales]

In my case I'm not sure if the issue is Alpine itself or the fact that it is running on qemu and I don't think qemu comes with an ipv6 dns resolver

[eznix86]

I tried this and it works

setup-interfaces
vi /etc/udhcpc/udhcpc.conf # Uncomment RESOLV_CONF="NO"
rc-service networking restart
ip addr
echo "nameserver 8.8.8.8" > /etc/resolv.conf
echo "nameserver 8.8.4.4" >> /etc/resolv.conf

[agwidarsito]

Oh wow thanks so much, I'll give that a shot!