[Fwd: /etc/hosts and /etc/host.conf confusion]

[David Fuchs]

Kevin Stevens wrote:
> 
> Try ping; even if the host isn't available you can see if it resolves.  
> "host" does it's own thing, which is sometimes non-obvious (to me at 
> least).  Look at the sections in man host about the variables it expects 
> to be configured.
> 

	Excellent, ping does resolve a new entry in /etc/hosts properly.  So as 
you said, `host' is doing it's own thing.  The manpage for host gives me 
some leads which I'll follow through on.

> The latter.  For example, many workstations aren't configured to run 
> named at all; they'll still reference their local hosts file.
> 

	Perfect!  It's good to know this, as the manpage doesn't specifically 
state that the system checks for a running named process - at least I 
didn't see that anywhere.

	Thanks for your help Kevin!

-- 
Thanks,
-David Fuchs