Hey everyone,

I've been using a small server for my LAN for a little while now. It has Trustix Secure Linux 2.0 on it. Before now, I never bothered to configure the /etc/hosts file.

Now, I completely don't understand what's going wrong. My /etc/hosts file looks like this:

Now, I can query outside names with the hosts command, like "host google.com". But, "host server1.lan" or even "host localhost" doesn't work.

/etc/resolv.conf has my ISP's DNS servers. /etc/host.conf has "order hosts,bind"

Last, /etc/nsswitch.conf has "hosts: files nisplus dns"

Why doesn't my hosts file work!?

Thanks in advance,
Mike

Are you using DHCP?

DHCP is enabled on the network, but its not enabled for the server in question. I assign the IP address manually.

host is a tool to query DNS server, not like other network tools which use system order
query defined in /etc/host.conf

it is like dig or nslookup

server1.lan should be resolved with program like ping, nmap, etc...

My mistake. Thanks for clarifying that, Cedrik.