[[!meta title="Google Earth and IPv6 DNS lookups"]] [[!meta date="2011-01-22 13:02"]] [[!meta author="rohieb"]] [[!meta license="CC-BY-SA 3.0"]] Apparently the combination of a WLAN router that blocks IPv6 DNS queries of type `AAAA` (in my case, it was a Siemens S1621-Z220-A sold as [Alice Modem 1121 WLAN][0]) and the current version of Google Earth for Linux (I am using 5.1.3533.1731 from [Medibuntu][1]) do not work well together. The problem is that the router simply throws away `AAAA` queries (or generally, any type it does not know), so the DNS query times out. However, Google Earth does not seem to fall back to IPv4 queries (type `A`) in this case, and shows a message about network connectivity errors. I don’t know if it’s Google Earth’s fault or if the underlying eglibc resolver of my Linux system does something wrong, anyhow there is a fairly well-commented [bug report][2] on Launchpad for Ubuntu Karmic and Lucid which explains the issue. Anyway, I got rid of the problem by manually configuring a nameserver on my local machine (for example the nameserver(s) of your internet provider, or the ones of OpenDNS), and not using the WLAN router as a resolver. NetworkManager allows you to do this by editing a connection and choosing “Automatic DHCP (Addresses only)” on the IPv4 register tab; or you can write the settings directly to your `/etc/resolv.conf` (here for the OpenDNS servers): nameserver 208.67.222.222 nameserver 208.67.220.220 [0]: http://www.alice-wiki.de/Alice_Modem_1121_WLAN [1]: http://www.medibuntu.org/ [2]: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/eglibc/+bug/417757 [[!tag Ubuntu workaround Alice_DSL DNS eglibc Google_Earth HanseNet IPv4 IPv6 Ubuntu_Karmic Ubuntu_Lucid]]