>Actually, my understanding of resolv.conf, is that you can set the
>lookup order.  On one of my machines (don't recall if it was linux, NetBSD
>or something else entirely), i had the line:
>
>hosts bind
>[...]

This doesn't help the original poster, who said that one of his problems
was a Mac on his local network hung because it couldn't reach his DNS
server.

--Ken