Linux RMI lookup takes too long when DNS is not available

Question

I am running Java 6 on Linux and ran into the following problem (please bear with me, there is a lot of background info before the actual question). I have a Java program that uses RMI for IPC. The server binds to localhost and clients lookup on localhost. The following are code snippets for my server and client.
// Server binding code
registry = LocateRegistry.createRegistry(port);
registry.rebind("SERVICE", new ServiceImpl());
// Client lookup code
Naming.lookup("rmi://localhost:" + port + "/SERVICE");As long as DNS works, this code runs just fine. It takes ~0.3s for the server to bind and ~0.4s for the client to lookup. If DNS is not available, it takes ~40s for the server to bind and ~60s for the client to lookup! The times for lookup do not change if I use "127.0.0.1" instead of "localhost".
I have localhost defined in my /etc/hosts file and my /etc/nsswitch.conf file specifies that host lookups should use files before nameservers. By commenting out the localhost value in the /etc/hosts file, I have determined that eventually the value in /etc/hosts is used if needed (the server bind fails if DNS is not available and localhost is commented out).
If the network goes down, someone messes up the /etc/resolv.conf file, or our nameservers go down, RMI binds and lookups for something as easy to resolve as localhost takes way too long.
So my question boils down to: Is there any way I can bind and lookup RMI servers without using DNS or by using DNS after /etc/hosts lookup fails?

Answer 1

I turned on logging. You can see here that when DNS is working everything runs fine.
Nov 19, 2007 5:14:12 PM sun.rmi.transport.tcp.TCPTransport$ConnectionHandler run0
FINER: RMI TCP Connection(10)-127.0.0.1: (port 1234) client using localhost:0
Nov 19, 2007 5:14:12 PM sun.rmi.transport.tcp.TCPTransport handleMessages
FINE: RMI TCP Connection(10)-127.0.0.1: (port 1234) op = 80
Nov 19, 2007 5:14:12 PM sun.rmi.transport.StreamRemoteCall getInputStream
FINER: RMI TCP Connection(10)-127.0.0.1: getting input stream
Nov 19, 2007 5:14:12 PM sun.rmi.transport.Transport serviceCall
FINER: RMI TCP Connection(10)-127.0.0.1: call dispatcher
Nov 19, 2007 5:14:12 PM sun.rmi.server.UnicastServerRef logCall
FINER: RMI TCP Connection(10)-127.0.0.1: [127.0.0.1: sun.rmi.registry.RegistryImpl[0:0:0, 0]: java.rmi.Remote lookup(java.lang.String)]
Nov 19, 2007 5:14:12 PM sun.rmi.transport.StreamRemoteCall getOutputStream
FINER: RMI TCP Connection(10)-127.0.0.1: getting output stream
Nov 19, 2007 5:14:12 PM sun.rmi.transport.tcp.TCPTransport$ConnectionHandler run0
FINE: RMI TCP Connection(11)-127.0.0.1: accepted socket from [127.0.0.1:37084]When DNS is not working, there is a 15 second timeout and 5 seconds to reconnect.
Nov 19, 2007 5:16:03 PM sun.rmi.transport.tcp.TCPTransport$ConnectionHandler run0
FINE: RMI TCP Connection(12)-127.0.0.1: accepted socket from [127.0.0.1:57328]
Nov 19, 2007 5:16:03 PM sun.rmi.transport.tcp.TCPTransport$ConnectionHandler run0
FINER: RMI TCP Connection(12)-127.0.0.1: (port 1234) suggesting 127.0.0.1:57328
Nov 19, 2007 5:16:03 PM sun.rmi.transport.tcp.TCPTransport$ConnectionHandler run0
FINER: RMI TCP Connection(12)-127.0.0.1: (port 1234) client using localhost:0
Nov 19, 2007 5:16:03 PM sun.rmi.transport.tcp.TCPTransport handleMessages
FINE: RMI TCP Connection(12)-127.0.0.1: (port 1234) op = 80
Nov 19, 2007 5:16:03 PM sun.rmi.transport.StreamRemoteCall getInputStream
FINER: RMI TCP Connection(12)-127.0.0.1: getting input stream
Nov 19, 2007 5:16:03 PM sun.rmi.transport.Transport serviceCall
FINER: RMI TCP Connection(12)-127.0.0.1: call dispatcher
Nov 19, 2007 5:16:03 PM sun.rmi.server.UnicastServerRef logCall
FINER: RMI TCP Connection(12)-127.0.0.1: [127.0.0.1: sun.rmi.registry.RegistryImpl[0:0:0, 0]: java.rmi.Remote lookup(java.lang.String)]
Nov 19, 2007 5:16:03 PM sun.rmi.transport.StreamRemoteCall getOutputStream
FINER: RMI TCP Connection(12)-127.0.0.1: getting output stream
Nov 19, 2007 5:16:18 PM sun.rmi.transport.tcp.TCPTransport handleMessages
FINE: RMI TCP Connection(12)-127.0.0.1: (port 1234) connection closed
Nov 19, 2007 5:16:18 PM sun.rmi.transport.tcp.TCPConnection close
FINE: RMI TCP Connection(12)-127.0.0.1: close connection
Nov 19, 2007 5:16:23 PM sun.rmi.transport.tcp.TCPTransport$ConnectionHandler run0
FINE: RMI TCP Connection(13)-127.0.0.1: accepted socket from [127.0.0.1:37087]I tried specifying different timeout values using different RMI properties. Nothing seems to affect it except setting sun.rmi.transport.tcp.readTimeout to a value less than 15 seconds (which is not practical).
Any ideas why getting the output stream would timeout?