yesod init && yesod devel fails with "getAddrInfo: does not exist"

[Steffen Jost]

Running yesod devel on a freshly initialized project results in the error message:

Devel application launched: http://localhost:3000
devel.hs: getAddrInfo: does not exist (Name or service not known)

Just to be sure, I did a fresh install of GHC, deleting .ghc and .cabal, and followed the instructions on the Yesod homepage under "Stackage Server". I just issued the commands

yesod init

cd foo && cabal install -j --enable-tests --max-backjumps=-1 --reorder-goals && yesod devel

with answering "Project name: foo" and database=s.

Googling led to a much earlier discussion in this google group about this error, but the advice there is outdated, as settings.yml already contains the line

host:           "_env:HOST:*4" # any IPv4 host

as expected. Changing *4 to * does not help either (I am on an IPv4-only network anyway).

> ghc --version

The Glorious Glasgow Haskell Compilation System, version 7.8.3

> yesod version

yesod version

yesod-bin version: 1.4.1

[Michael Snoyman]

Can you report the result of `yesod devel --disable-reverse-proxy`?

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[Steffen Jost]

I get the same error, the only difference being that I do not even see the refreshing "application isn't built" page at localhost:3000 that I see with yesod devel:

> yesod devel --disable-reverse-proxy
Yesod devel server. Press ENTER to quit
Resolving dependencies...
Configuring foo-0.0.0...
Rebuilding application... (using cabal)
Starting development server...
Starting devel application

[Michael Snoyman]

Interesting. What OS are you on? And can you try running a minimal Warp application[1] and see if that works?

[1] https://github.com/yesodweb/wai/tree/master/wai#getting-started

--

[geoff]

Can you also do

echo $HOST

ping $HOST

[Steffen Jost]

I am on a fresh install of openSUSE 13.2 Linux.

Yes, the minimal example works perfectly fine, eg. FPComplete, Yesod Tutorial, Part1 downloaded to a local file called YesodMinimal.hs works as follows:

> ghc -O2 YesodMinimal.hs                                       

[1 of 1] Compiling Main             ( YesodMinimal.hs, YesodMinimal.o )                                      

Loading package ghc-prim ... linking ... done.                                                               

Loading package integer-gmp ... linking ... done.                                                            

Loading package base ... linking ... done.                                                                   

Loading package old-locale-1.0.0.6 ... linking ... done.                                                     

Loading package array-0.5.0.0 ... linking ... done.                                                          

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Linking YesodMinimal ...

> ./YesodMinimal 

YesodMinimal: warpEnv: no PORT environment variable found

> export PORT=3000

> ./YesodMinimal 

11/Dec/2014:21:50:44 +0100 [Info#yesod-core] Application launched @(yesod-core-1.4.6:Yesod.Core.Dispatch ./Yesod/Core/Dispatch.hs:141:11)

127.0.0.1 - - [11/Dec/2014:21:50:52 +0100] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 200 - "" "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/39.0.2171.65 Safari/537.36"

127.0.0.1 - - [11/Dec/2014:21:50:52 +0100] "GET /favicon.ico HTTP/1.1" 404 - "" "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/39.0.2171.65 Safari/537.36"

127.0.0.1 - - [11/Dec/2014:21:50:56 +0100] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 200 - "" "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/39.0.2171.65 Safari/537.36"

[Steffen Jost]

> echo $HOST

empusa.tcs.ifi.lmu.de

> ping $HOST

ping: unknown host empusa.tcs.ifi.lmu.de

Well, that hostname does not exist, as it is imaginary. I am on a Laptop, which is not meant to be reachable from the outside. Also, $HOST stays the same, regardless of the network that I am in. At the moment, I am on an entirely different network at another place.

However, I also tried export HOST="" and export HOST="localhost", but that did not help either. 

[Michael Snoyman]

Try HOST="127.0.0.1", that should fix it. (Good catch Geoff :) )

--

[geoff]

Steffen to understand what is going on, the new syntax here is saying that if there is an environment variable called HOST; use that; otherwise use *4.  you instead replace it with just "*4"  it should work fine.  It's not clear to me why exporting localhost as HOST wouldn't work, unless you don't have localhost in your hostfile either (ie, if ping localhost fails its the same thing)

[Steffen Jost]

Thanks a lot! 

export HOST="127.0.0.1" does work for yesod devel

export HOST="localhost" does not work, despite ping localhost working fine.

If the error message would have provided the hostname therein, I might have realized what was happening. Otherwise I had no clue that environment variables were used at all, as the yesod quick start does not mention those either (also see the PORT variable in the code from my 3 post here, but thanks to the error message, I could help myself there).

Sorry for bothering with these trivial issues. My distribution did set that HOST variable up, I had no clue it even existed, apart from the installation asking me for a name for the machine.

[Michael Snoyman]

That would be due to the usage of AI_NUMERICHOST[1] in the relevant code. To quote the docs:

> HostName can be either a numeric network address (dotted quad for IPv4, colon-separated hex for IPv6) or a hostname. In the latter case, its addresses will be looked up unless AI_NUMERICHOST is specified as a hint.

That's diving in pretty deep in the codebase now ;)

[1] https://github.com/fpco/streaming-commons/blob/master/Data/Streaming/Network.hs#L138

[geoff]

Does that explain why using localhost doesn't work despite ping localhost working?

It might be better to take $HOST and $PORT out of the default config; both because typically users with the least experience in yesod are most likely to be happy with "*4" as the host and default 3000 port; and it also has the additional (slight) benefit of showing that _env_ format is optional.  or maybe even ask as a question in the init process.

[Michael Snoyman]

I'd be OK with changing host, but we need to leave port as is, since yesod devel uses that environment variable to tell the app which port to listen on.

[Steffen Jost]

I wonder why such a network IO error is not caught? Wouldn't it make sense to catch and retry with 127.0.0.1 if the HOST environment variable is set, but unreachable?

[Michael Snoyman]

I don't think that would be a good idea. Yes, it would have addressed your confusion here. But for someone running a production system, it would be far more confusing as to why their app consistently binds to a specific network interface even though they tried to specify a different one.

On Fri Dec 12 2014 at 8:48:17 AM Steffen Jost <steffe...@gmail.com> wrote:

I wonder why such a network IO error is not caught? Wouldn't it make sense to catch and retry with 127.0.0.1 if the HOST environment variable is set, but unreachable?

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