Some ftplib tests sometimes time out. Seem they seem to try to connect to "localhost" (rather than "127.0.0.1"), I was wondering if this could be a DNS issue and if we should resolve "localhost" in advance like Charles-François did for some other tests (or simply hardcode "127.0.0.1", actually).

http://buildbot.python.org/all/builders/x86%20Windows7%203.x/builds/7060/steps/test/logs/stdio

(example:

======================================================================
ERROR: testTimeoutDefault (test.test_ftplib.TestTimeouts)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "D:\cygwin\home\db3l\buildarea\3.x.bolen-windows7\build\lib\test\test_ftplib.py", line 953, in testTimeoutDefault
    ftp = ftplib.FTP("localhost")
  File "D:\cygwin\home\db3l\buildarea\3.x.bolen-windows7\build\lib\ftplib.py", line 115, in __init__
    self.connect(host)
  File "D:\cygwin\home\db3l\buildarea\3.x.bolen-windows7\build\lib\ftplib.py", line 150, in connect
    source_address=self.source_address)
  File "D:\cygwin\home\db3l\buildarea\3.x.bolen-windows7\build\lib\socket.py", line 454, in create_connection
    raise err
  File "D:\cygwin\home\db3l\buildarea\3.x.bolen-windows7\build\lib\socket.py", line 445, in create_connection
    sock.connect(sa)
socket.timeout: timed out

)

> Some ftplib tests sometimes time out. Seem they seem to try to connect to "localhost" (rather than "127.0.0.1"), I was wondering if this could be a DNS issue and if we should resolve "localhost" in advance like Charles-François did for some other tests (or simply hardcode "127.0.0.1", actually).

If it only happens on Windows >= 7 buildbots, then it's likely a
consequence of this:
http://serverfault.com/questions/4689/windows-7-localhost-name-resolution-is-handled-within-dns-itself-why

Apparently, since Windows 7, "localhost" doesn't appear in the hosts
file anymore: so, depending on your DNS resolver settings, this could
perfectly explain such timeouts (assuming it's not a firewall issue).

Hard-cording 127.0.0.1 for this test should be OK, because the server
setup explicitly binds an AF_INET socket. We'll probably have to check
the rest of the test suite for similar issues.

> Hard-cording 127.0.0.1 for this test should be OK, because the server
> setup explicitly binds an AF_INET socket. We'll probably have to check
> the rest of the test suite for similar issues.

Ok, let's do it!

Here is a patch for default.

Changing support.HOST from 'localhost' to '127.0.0.1' means that on dual-stack
hosts (I don't think the test suite would run on IPv6-only hosts anyway), the
tests will now always use IPv4, whereas they are currently using either IPv6 or
IPv4 addresses depending on the host's name resolution settings.
For example, on a RHEL6 box:

>>> socket.getaddrinfo('localhost', 0)
[(10, 1, 6, '', ('::1', 0, 0, 0)), (10, 2, 17, '', ('::1', 0, 0, 0)),
(10, 3, 0, '', ('::1', 0, 0, 0)), (2, 1, 6, '', ('127.0.0.1', 0)), (2,
2, 17, '', ('127.0.0.1', 0)), (2, 3, 0, '', ('127.0.0.1', 0))]

So on this host, 'localhost' resolves to '::1'. I think it would be
better to have support.HOST set to socket.getaddrinfo('localhost', 0)[0][4][0]
(sic), so that the test will use the preferred protocol on the target host, and
also that IPv6 is also tested in tests which don't explicitely use
'::1'. But this
means that we should have an support.HOSTv4 for tests that explicitly rely on
IPv4, e.g.  test_ftplib.

> Changing support.HOST from 'localhost' to '127.0.0.1' means that on
> dual-stack
> hosts (I don't think the test suite would run on IPv6-only hosts
> anyway), the
> tests will now always use IPv4, whereas they are currently using
> either IPv6 or
> IPv4 addresses depending on the host's name resolution settings.

That would only be true if the server we are contacting happens to
listen on both IPv6 and IPv4, right? I don't think we have such a
situation in the test suite. Clients can use create_connection()
for transparent support of IPv6 and IPv4, but servers have to choose
a family when creating their socket.

> That would only be true if the server we are contacting happens to
> listen on both IPv6 and IPv4, right? I don't think we have such a
> situation in the test suite.

Ah, I thought some code was using getaddrinfo() to select an arbitrary
bind() address for localhost.

That's OK then.

LGTM

New changeset 085ba7d85eb2 by Antoine Pitrou in branch 'default':
Issue #18792: Use "127.0.0.1" or "::1" instead of "localhost" as much as possible, since "localhost" goes through a DNS lookup under recent Windows versions.
http://hg.python.org/cpython/rev/085ba7d85eb2

New changeset 7728b073c77c by Antoine Pitrou in branch '3.3':
Issue #18792: Use "127.0.0.1" or "::1" instead of "localhost" as much as possible, since "localhost" goes through a DNS lookup under recent Windows versions.
http://hg.python.org/cpython/rev/7728b073c77c

New changeset 48de8df194d9 by Antoine Pitrou in branch '2.7':
Issue #18792: Use "127.0.0.1" or "::1" instead of "localhost" as much as possible, since "localhost" goes through a DNS lookup under recent Windows versions.
http://hg.python.org/cpython/rev/48de8df194d9

Done, thanks :)

FYI - hardcoding these addresses is now causing me problems as I try to get our test suite passing on IPv6 only hosts.  "localhost" is correct.  

IMNSHO if for some reason a system cannot resolve "localhost" into a correct address, it should be banned from running any form of networking related test. :/

I should not have to write messy conditional code to try and determine which type of socket I will likely need to bind to to determine which format of IP address string I need to supply as the localhost bind address.  That is backwards!

https://bugs.python.org/issue29639 opened to track undoing this when appropriate.