On Wed, Feb 15, 2023 at 10:04:14AM -0500, Greg Wooledge wrote: > The part I still don't understand is how adding "search files, nameserver" > to /etc/resolv.conf and rebooting could change the behavior of any of > Gene's commands.
Sorry, Gene's line was actually "search hosts, nameserver". So, "ping coyote" should have triggered name resolution for "coyote.hosts" and/or "coyote.nameserver". It's just barely conceivable that *something* might have created a resolvable entry for "coyote.hosts", and that some libnss-* module might have returned a working IP address using it. I just don't know what that *something* could be.