"localhost" is an unknownhost

[Bennett Hunter]

Hi,

I have an HP-UX 10.20 machine, and I am trying to ping the local machine with "ping localhost". The system responds with "unknownhost localhost". I verified that the /etc/hosts file has the following line:

127.0.0.1 localhost loopback

I can't figure out why this ping command fails. This needs to work because an application uses the localhost alias, and it is giving me errors because "localhost" is an unknown host. Please help!!

Thanks,

Bennett Hunter

[James R. Ferguson]

Hi:

Does your /etc/nsswitch.conf file specify the local hosts file? For instance, if you are using DNS, you should have an entry that looks like: "files [NOTFOUND=continue] dns".

...JRF...

[Bennett Hunter]

James,

Thanks for your reply. The nsswitch.conf file didn't exist, but I created it earlier with the following line (I'm not sure if it is needed):

hosts: dns[NOTFOUND=continue UNAVAIL=continue]files

I will add the line that you mentioned to see if it works.

[Darrel Louis]

Bennett,

Was this working before.
Check with netstat -rn:


See attachment.

[Bennett Hunter]

It's working. I had to add the following line to the nsswitch.conf file:

hosts: files [NOTFOUND=continue] dns


Thanks for the help!