Github error – fatal: Unable to look up github.com (port 9418) (Name or service not known)

1. I was trying to add a gem to a Rails3 app gemfile directing it to a git repo by:

1	gem 'example', :git => "git://github.com/gituser/example.git"

While bundle install, I got the error message:

1	fatal: Unable to look up github.com (port 9418) (Name or service not known)

I tried git clone -q git://github.com/gituser/example.git or rails plugin installgit://github.com/gituser/example.git, still I got the same error message. It seems that Github has recently updated DNS and the changes haven’t propagated yet. You can use a workaround:

1. Run ping github.com and read the current IP
2. Go to /etc/hosts on your Rails server (assuming its Linux) and add the following line:

   1	207.97.227.239 github.com wiki.github.com gist.github.com assets0.github.com assets1.github.com assets2.github.com assets3.github.com

   where instead of 207.97.227.239 type it the current Github IP

It is suggested to remove this line once the DNS is up and working again.