I am experiencing a strange problem where my system is looking up the DNS servers before the hosts file when I refer to local names. I have cut my hosts file down to the most basic hosts file that one can have (127.0.0.1 localhost) and when I type 'telnet localhost' it still thinks it needs to lookup the request on the DNS server. /etc/nsswitch.conf has been set to query the hosts file before the dns server, so that is not where the problem lies.
I have made two interesting observations. First, if I type "ping localhost" everything goes as expected, likewise if I type 'ftp localhost'. It seems to be telnet which is causing the problem (and the same happens I send or receive mail to the local ipop3d or exim daemons) Second is that if I remove the word 'dns' from /etc/nsswitch.conf, or if I remove the name server entries from /etc/resolv.conf, everything goes as planned (apart from the obvious problem that I now can't query anything APART from the hosts file!) Any help is greatly appreciated Richard
