[TriLUG] Reverse Lookup Using /etc/hosts

[Joseph Mack NA3T]

On Thu, 26 Apr 2007, Tanner Lovelace wrote:

> On 4/25/07, Joseph Mack NA3T <jmack at wm7d.net> wrote:
>> On Wed, 25 Apr 2007, Alexei Znamensky wrote:
>> 
>> > Tarus,
>> >
>> > nslookup/host works exclusively with DNS, it doesn't follow the system's
>> > resolver order (read /etc/nsswitch.conf or host.conf).
>> 
>> there is no resolver facility in Linux which applications
>> ask for name resolution. Applications do what they want and
>> can ignore files in /etc
>
> Not true.

The original poster is not getting name resolution.

Applications that access disks don't do it directly, they 
don't have special code for the various types of disks, they 
ask the disk access facility to do it for them.

The original poster has an application that accesses DNS 
directly, which it has no business doing. I ran into the 
same problem with Postfix - it only uses DNS. If the 
application had to ask a name resolution facility for 
resolution, then the name resolution facility would get the 
info from wherever (DNS, /etc/hosts) and return it to the 
application. The application would not know, or have any way 
of knowing where the information came from.

I don't have the original post (can't find the mailing list 
archives), but applications and sysadmins should have tools 
other than DNS debugging tools for name resolution.

Joe

-- 
Joseph Mack NA3T EME(B,D), FM05lw North Carolina
jmack (at) wm7d (dot) net - azimuthal equidistant map
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