5.21. c-ares

Previously, when searching for AF_UNSPEC or AF_INET6 address families, the c-ares library fell back to the AF_INET family if no AF_INET6 addresses were found. Consequently, IPv4 addresses were returned even if only IPv6 addresses were requested. With this update, c-ares performs the fallback only when searching for AF_UNSPEC addresses.

The ares_parse_a_reply() function leaked memory when the user attempted to parse an invalid reply. With this update, the allocated memory is freed properly and the memory leak no longer occurs.

A switch statement inside the ares_malloc_data() public function was missing a terminating break statement. This could result in unpredictable behavior and sometimes the application terminated unexpectedly. This update adds the missing switch statement and the ares_malloc_data() function now works as intended.

When parsing SeRVice (SRV) record queries, c-ares was accessing memory incorrectly on architectures that require data to be aligned in memory. This caused the program to terminate unexpectedly with the SIGBUS signal. With this update, c-ares has been modified to access the memory correctly in the scenario described.

Previously, the ares_gethostbyname manual page did not document the ARES_ENODATA error code as a valid and expected error code. With this update, the manual page has been modified accordingly.