What version of Go are you using (go version)?

$ go version
go version go1.12.6 linux/arm

Does this issue reproduce with the latest release?

Not tested on 1.12.7 but I don't believe any of the tickets included between 1.12.6 and 1.12.7 affect this issue.

What operating system and processor architecture are you using (go env)?

$ go env
GOARCH="arm"
GOBIN=""
GOCACHE="/home/vsys/.cache/go-build"
GOEXE=""
GOFLAGS=""
GOHOSTARCH="arm"
GOHOSTOS="linux"
GOOS="linux"
GOPATH="/home/vsys/go"
GOPROXY=""
GORACE=""
GOROOT="/usr/lib/go"
GOTMPDIR=""
GOTOOLDIR="/usr/lib/go/pkg/tool/linux_arm"
GCCGO="gccgo"
GOARM="6"
CC="gcc"
CXX="g++"
CGO_ENABLED="1"
GOMOD=""
CGO_CFLAGS="-g -O2"
CGO_CPPFLAGS=""
CGO_CXXFLAGS="-g -O2"
CGO_FFLAGS="-g -O2"
CGO_LDFLAGS="-g -O2"
PKG_CONFIG="pkg-config"
GOGCCFLAGS="-fPIC -marm -pthread -fmessage-length=0 -fdebug-prefix-map=/tmp/go-build834352528=/tmp/go-build -gno-record-gcc-switches"

What did you do?

package main

import (
	"net"
	"fmt"
	"os"
)

func main() {
	ips, err := net.LookupIP("localhost")
	if err != nil {
		fmt.Fprintf(os.Stderr, "Could not get IPs: %v\n", err)
		os.Exit(1)
	}
	for _, ip := range ips {
		fmt.Printf("localhost. IN A %s\n", ip.String())
	}
}

The above program gives the wrong address for localhost if:

• The system does not use GNU libc AND
• The combination of the DNS server configured on the system and the system's default domain do not produce a correct result for localhost.

The system where this was observed is running Alpine Linux 3.9. This uses the musl libc. This libc does not support /etc/nsswitch.conf and so that file is usually missing.

On this type of system, it seems that golang's name resolution code looks for /etc/nsswitch.conf, doesn't find it, and then defaults to DNS only, skipping any lookup in /etc/hosts. The DNS query that is sent is not for localhost but for localhost.x.y.z where x.y.z is the domain setting from resolv.conf.

If the configured DNS server produces a correct response for localhost.x.y.z then all is still well, but if it doesn't then lookup fails (or even worse, as below, returns an address for another host).

My suggestion is that golang on musl libc systems should follow the musl libc convention, which is to check /etc/hosts first and then DNS.

A workaround is to add a file /etc/nsswitch.conf that specifies hosts: files dns.

What did you expect to see?

On a system with IPv6 enabled:

localhost. IN A ::1
localhost. IN A 127.0.0.1

What did you see instead?

The exact output varies with the environment where it is run, but eg:

localhost. IN A 192.64.119.254