[geeks] QUESTION: why would a program suddenly start using IPv6?

[Charles Shannon Hendrix]

On Thu, 5 Jul 2007 19:43:24 -0400 (EDT)
der Mouse <mouse at Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> wrote:

> > For a long time now, I've used one of my Sun machines as a subversion
> > server.  [...svnserve...]
> 
> > I finally ran lsof and found out that svnserve was listening on an
> > IPv6 address.
> 
> *Instead of* an IPv4 address?  That's just...broken.  At least, that's
> my first reaction; I'd need details to be competent to hold a proper
> opinion.

Yeah, that's why this is puzzling.  Once my machines are up and running, I
rarely mess with them very much.  In fact, the subversion machine has
basically been idle for the last 4 months.

> > Why would svnserve suddenly start defaulting to an ipv6 address when
> > no other servers I run do?  svnserve has not been updated, and
> > neither has its configuration.
> 
> > I don't run IPv6 anything on purpose, and haven't changed the
> > configuration on this machine in a long time now.
> 
> > However, just in case I was "sleep administrating" or something like
> > that, any idea what I might have changed that would cause this?
> 
> Perhaps the machine's hostname now has an IPv6 address in the DNS?

No, my DNS server sits on top of it, and I wrote all the zone files myself.
No IPv6 at all.

> Perhaps you changed something (like libc or the kernel) that's used by
> svnserve?  (The kernel alone might be enough, if it meant that
> interfaces that used to have no v6 addresses now do - even if just
> link-local addresses.)

Nope... I installed FreeBSD 6.1 when I got the machine about a year ago, and
that's it.  No kernel upgrade except to build my own kernel right after the
install was done.

I really can't figure this one out.

It's working... I'd just like to know what caused this.

-- 
shannon           | An Irishman is never drunk as long as he can hold onto 
                  | one blade of grass and not fall off the face of the earth.