timeout instead of connection refused (firefox 3.5.3 and 3.0.15)

[Anders Gavare]

Replying to myself:
> Firefox behaves very strangely. When connecting to 127.0.0.1, I expect
> an immediate Connection refused. That is where I route lots of ad/spam
> hosts using /etc/hosts. Instead of refusing the connection, Firefox
> waits forever. (I am assuming it will timeout, eventually.)

Just in case someone else runs into this bug, and is looking for a
temporary workaround: a hack/workaround to make Firefox behave normally
again is to change all 127.0.0.1 entries in /etc/hosts that have to do
with ad/spam host names to 127.0.0.2. (I.e. change everything except
localhost.)

(While telnet _immediately_ says Connection refused and Can't assign
requested address, respectively, for 127.0.0.1 and 127.0.0.2, Firefox
differs widely in timeouts for the two different addresses.)


Anders