[Python-Dev] buildbot svn exceptions again...

["Martin v. Löwis"]

Bill Janssen wrote:
> parc-leopard-1 (and most of the other builders) are failing the svn 
> checkout with the following error:
> 
> svn: PROPFIND of '/projects/python/trunk': Could not resolve hostname
> `svn.python.org': Temporary failure in name resolution
> (http://svn.python.org)
> 
> When I log into that machine as "buildbot" and do the svn checkout 
> manually using the following command
> 
> /usr/bin/svn checkout --non-interactive --no-auth-cache --revision
> HEAD http://svn.python.org/projects/python/trunk build
> 
> it works fine.

That's a common OSX problem/bug. Processes occasionally lose the ability
to resolve host names. Various theories float around what's causing this
(most commonly, people expect that a "controlling terminal" must be
present); my theory is this:

There is a Mach port in the system that lets a process talk to the local
resolver (lookupd, or whatever Apple's naming infrastructure is called
today). For some reason, this port gets closed in a "background"
process, perhaps because the parent process closed it when you logged
out. Or the Kerberos credentials expired, or some such...

In short, if some OS X expert could shed some light on this, it would be
appreciated. It would then be good to add this to the wiki. See also

http://buildbot.net/trac/wiki/UsingLaunchd
http://developer.apple.com/mac/library/technotes/tn2005/tn2083.html

Regards,
Martin