On 2/24/06, mike ledoux <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > At least on my system, 'host' doesn't use /etc/nsswitch.conf at all:
Good point. > I believe this is by design, the host command is specifically > intended to query DNS. Yes. "host", "dig", and "nslookup" all come from the BIND suite (part of "bind-utils" on Red Hat). They're DNS diagnostic tools, not programs which use DNS as an application. Most programs (ping, Firefox, etc.) are going to use the gethostby*() library calls, which is where NSS (the name service switch) comes in. In effect, Firefox calls "gethostbyname(www.google.com)" to get the host information for Google. NSS might check local files, NIS, DNS, LDAP, SMB, or any number of other things to get that information. The attached Perl script provides a command-line interface to the gethostby*() calls.
gethost
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