Re: /usr/bin/host localhost

[mlelstv%serpens.de@localhost (Michael van Elst)]

petar%smokva.net@localhost (Petar Bogdanovic) writes:

>I noticed this:

>	$ host localhost
>	Host localhost not found: 3(NXDOMAIN)

>and that's how I actually noticed this.  Therefore I'm not 100% sure if
>`host' was always behaving like that.

'host' is a DNS tool, it does nameserver queries.

On some other systems, 'host' also knows how to resolve names
from other sources like /etc/hosts, but on most it does not.

There is the command 'getent' that can be used to query the
nameservice databases. It will do the same kind of lookup
that is used by ping, telnet, ssh, etc..