"Temporary failure in name resolution" or "Host name lookup failure" only for some domains but not others

Solution Verified - Updated -

Issue

  • Temporary failure in name resolution or Host name lookup failure only for some domains but not others
  • The problem only occurs on RHEL6, not on RHEL5 or Solaris
  • The problem can be seen with telnet and with traceroute on RHEL6
  • Specific DNS query tools/utilities such as host or nslookup or dig work fine in all environments
# cat /etc/redhat-release
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server release 6.7 (Santiago)

# telnet host.example.com
telnet: host.example.com: Temporary failure in name resolution
host.example.com: Host name lookup failure
# cat /etc/redhat-release
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server release 5.11 (Tikanga)

# telnet host.example.com
Trying 10.0.0.157...
Connected to host.example.com.
Escape character is '^]'.

Environment

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 (unconfirmed but likely also affected)
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6
  • Hostname with many A and/or AAAA records
  • DNS response larger than 512 bytes
  • Not allowed TCP traffic over port 53
  • Infoblox DNS server (optional)

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