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Known Issues

Some providers block DNS traffic for localhost.direct​

Some Internet Service Providers (ISPs) configure their networks to reject DNS requests for domain names that resolve to the IP address 127.0.0.1. They do so to protect their users against Cross-Site Scripting attacks caused by misconfiguration of domain names.

Unfortunately, domain names that resolve to 127.0.0.1 on purpose are very important for developers who are doing local development of a secure application. Secure applications must be contacted using SSL, and must therefore have SSL certificates. SSL certificates must be for some domain name, and that domain name must refer to 127.0.0.1 for the traffic to be sent to the developer's local machine.

When doing local development of a Reboot application, using rbt dev run, the Reboot application uses the domain localhost.direct that resolves to 127.0.0.1. On ISPs that refuse to DNS-resolve hosts like localhost.direct, Reboot local development may therefore not work without some changes.

Am I affected?​

Run the following in your terminal:

dig localhost.direct

If there is no issue, then the result contains an "answer section" with the 127.0.0.1 IP address:

;; ANSWER SECTION:
localhost.direct.    3600    IN    A    127.0.0.1

If this section is missing (i.e. you don't see the 127.0.0.1 IP anywhere), or if the query fails entirely, for example like this...

;; connection timed out; no servers could be reached

... Then you are affected by this issue, and will need to consider the solutions below.

The following ISPs are known to be affected:

  • Vodafone / Ziggo (The Netherlands)
  • YouSee (Denmark)
  • [please contact us if you are affected and your ISP is not on this list!]

Solutions​

If your ISP does not DNS-resolve localhost.direct, you can still do local development on your Reboot applications by choosing any of the following solutions:

Add an entry to /etc/hosts (recommended)​

To avoid making any DNS requests for localhost.direct at all, add the following line to your /etc/hosts file:

127.0.0.1 localhost.direct

Here is a one-line command to do so:

sudo sh -c 'echo "127.0.0.1 localhost.direct" >> /etc/hosts'

Use mkcert​

(Documentation coming soon!)

Use a VPN​

Your VPN provider most likely does not filter DNS traffic. By activating the VPN of your choice, you will most likely be able to resolve localhost.direct.

Use ngrok​

ngrok is a service that will make applications running on your local machine available on a public internet hostname, which includes SSL support.

Follow the ngrok getting started guide to get set up.

Missing features​

The following are features that Reboot does not (currently) have, but would expect to be able to offer in the future.

  • There is no deadlock detection or prevention between multiple Transactions.