Force nslookup use hosts file not the DNS

[Qcheck]

Hello smarts,

I am trying to force to use hosts file rather than DNS(resolv.conf), on RHEL 5.4. But doesn't work.

The order in /etc/host.conf has the following:
order hosts,bind

And the /etc/nsswitch.conf has the following:
[root]# grep hosts /etc/nsswitch.conf
#hosts: db files nisplus nis dns
#hosts: files dns
hosts: files
[root]#

[root]# nslookup
Server:
Address:

** server can't find : NXDOMAIN

[root]

Any ideas gurus?

[Matti_Kurkela · Accepted solution]

The nslookup command is originally a DNS server testing tool. The RHEL default version of nslookup will always try to contact a DNS server, because that's what it's programmed to do.

If you want to test the name resolver libraries (which use whatever is configured to /etc/nsswitch.conf), you'll need to use another tool: the "getent" command.

In your case, the command syntax is "getent hosts "

Note: the "hosts" in the getent command line does not refer to /etc/hosts directly, but to the "hosts:" line in /etc/nsswitch.conf.

The getent command can be used to test other lookup mechanisms specified in /etc/nsswitch.conf too: for example, if you're setting up LDAP and need to verify that usernames are being looked up from your chosen source, you might run a command like "getent passwd ".

MK

[Qcheck]

Mk, Thank you for the response. But getent doesn't work in my situation as one of the application is looking for the ip address which s specified in hosts file, as the DNS server has the new IP, which we haven't changed yet due to the downtime issue. Of course eventually we will change and I know it works then. Meanwhile, I thought nslookup might work looking at the hosts file rather than the resolv.conf file. But looks like not.

Thank you for the information, really very helpful.

[Tim Nelson]

how about a simple ping ?

as Matti mentioned, use a different tool.