--On Thursday, March 28, 2002 16:11 -0800 "Jeremy C. Reed" 
<reed@reedmedia.net> wrote:

> On Thu, 28 Mar 2002, Mark E. Perkins wrote:
>
>> 'ping netbsd1' works, so I guess there's no problem with gethostbyname(),
>> only a problem with my limited understanding... 8*)
>>
>> 'nslookup netbsd1' returns a "Non-existent host/domain" error from the
>> ISP name server. So I guess my *real& question is why? Shouldn't it
>> return the IP address as found in /etc/hosts?
>
> How would your ISP's name server know to find this information in your
> /etc/hosts?
>
> If you want your ISP's name server to return this information then ask
> your ISP. If you want to do it yourself, then configure named.conf
> (and zone). (NetBSD comes with BIND so you can do your own DNS.)

I don't expect my ISP's name server to find a host on my network.... It 
appears to my poor brain that the man page for nsswitch.conf is saying that 
nslookup will first look in my /etc/hosts, then query DNS. If this is not 
what

hosts:          files dns

in /etc/nsswitch.conf means, then I need some help to understand what it 
really means.

Thanks,
Mark