nss

[Kevin Bryan]

From
ftp://ftp.slackware.com/pub/slackware/slackware-current/ChangeLog.txt : 

  In /etc/nsswitch.conf, made these changes:
             -hosts:          files dns
             +hosts:          dns files
             -networks:       files dns
             +networks:       dns files
   This is the order shown in nsswitch.5, and under glibc-2.2 the
previous
   order no longer works.

This seems to imply that dns will always be checked before /etc/hosts
which just doesn't make sense.  One of the nice things about /etc/hosts
is that you can put frequently used names in there and skip the lookup
(great for slow DNS servers!).  Also it's good for testing if you can
redirect a host name to some other IP address as far as just one system
is concerned.  Please tell me that it is not the case that 'files dns'
does not work.  Thanks.

--Kevin