Symptoms: the Apache 2 error.log file (usually /var/log/apache2/error.log) shows a somewhat constant flow of errors which simply state “Invalid query name 1″.

Cause: The error is caused by a bug in the host util that is used for IP and DNS lookups.

Solution: Replace the default host utility with the Bind9 host util, easily done with APT:

apt-get remove host
apt-get install bind9-host

On some systems the removal of the original host utility also removes the dnsutils package, which can easliy be reinstalled with the command:

apt-get install dnsutils

Ahhhh…error-free logs. Beaut!