[Dnsmasq-discuss] Occasional "communications error", how to diagnose?

[Chris Green]

I run dnsmasq version 2.89 on my laptop which is running [x]ubuntu
23.04.

I have systemd.resolvd disabled.

I'm occasionally seeing the following error when getting a host's IP:-

    chris$ host homepi
    ;; communications error to 127.0.0.1#53: timed out
    homepi has address 192.168.1.113
    chris$ ps -ef | grep dnsmasq
    dnsmasq      933       1  0 Dec06 ?        00:00:22 /usr/sbin/dnsmasq -x /run/dnsmasq/dnsmasq.pid -u dnsmasq -7 /etc/dnsmasq.d,.dpkg-dist,.dpkg-old,.dpkg-new --local-service --trust-anchor=.,20326,8,2,e06d44b80b8f1d39a95c0b0d7c65d08458e880409bbc683457104237c7f8ec8d
    chris      86541    3774  0 15:05 pts/1    00:00:00 grep --color=auto dnsmasq
    chris$

As can be seen dnsmasq is running and subsequent queries work without any 
error (or delay).  The above timeout is a few seconds, maybe five or a bit
less.

There's no dnsmasq related error message in syslog (nothing for today at
all).  The system homepi is a Raspberry Pi on the same LAN as the laptop
running dnsmasq, The error isn't only for one particular host, I've seen
it for other systems on my LAN.

Can anyone suggest what might be causing the error and/or how to diagnose
what's wrong?

-- 
Chris Green