Re: disable dnsserver - what is the cost?

Timur Tabi wrote:
>
> When I disable DNS support (i.e. don't let squid run
> dnsserver), I get a warning that performance could be
> very poor. Could someone explain, in layman's terms,
> exactly how performance could be poor?

If one user requests a host where a blocking DNS lookup is
required, then Squid is completely blocked until this DNS
lookup finishes which can be up to a minute. During this
time no traffic at all passes Squid and the users may
think that the Internet (or the proxy) is dead.

> My version of squid (1.1.5b for OS/2) won't work if I enable
> dnsserver. It seems to work fine without it, though.

1.1.15 (not 1.1.5) is quite old (11 August 1997 == more
than a year old). There are a number of known (or rather
fixed and forgotten) issues with a version that old, not
to mention a number of year 2000 issues. Perhaps you or
someone else using OS/2 should look into porting a more
recent version of Squid version to OS/2.

None of the developers has a OS/2 machine suitable for
building or testing Squid.

---
Henrik Nordstrom
Spare time Squid hacker