Re: wget 1.10.x: New option --random to randomize the dns result

Jerry Lundstr=F6m <[email protected]> writes:

> As getaddrinfo() sorts the dns result no matter if its ipv4 or ipv6
> you will be resolved to the same server 99.9% of the time. I wished
> there was a flag to getaddrinfo() so that you simply could turn off
> the RFC 3484 behaviour but there isnt.

I understand what the option does, but I don't understand what value
it brings to the end user of Wget.  Wget is already capable of
reconnecting to the next address in the list if the first one fails
(and not use the one that failed during the same Wget run).  I'm
trying to imagine which users would ever want to use this option and
on what grounds, and I can't come up with a plausible scenario.

> Mirroring scripts, dists and other things that use wget might not
> always like getting the same ip address over and over again.  I am a
> Lunar Linux developer (www.lunar-linux.org) and we use wget for
> fetching sources and RFC 3484 breaks our mirrors before they are
> synced.

Do you mean that the first address in the list is malfunctioning?
Shouldn't Wget then fall back to the next one?  If one of the
addresses is malfunctioning, even with --random you could still get
that address, right?

Also, unless I'm missing something, shuffling the addresses at the
point at which you do it interferes with the --prefer-ipv[46] options.

>> Anyway, it's a better idea to add a generic shuffle() code to, say,
>> utils.c, and just call it from host.c.
>
> Didn't want to mess the struct up before it was done

I don't understand this.  Is there a failure mode in which the shuffle
could fail to complete?  If there is no allocation, I cannot imagine
any.

Thanks for sharing this patch with us.  I don't speak for Mauro, but
so far I am unconvinced that it should become part of Wget.