On Fri, 2006-01-13 at 18:50 +0000, Chris Jones wrote: > My hosts file is: > > # Do not remove the following line, or various programs > # that require network functionality will fail. > 127.0.0.1 bilbo.stow-jones.local localhost.localdomain localhost > 192.168.0.3 bilbo.stow-jones.local bilbo > 192.168.0.2 gandalf.stow-jones.local gandalf > 192.168.0.4 frodo.stow-jones.local frodo That "following line" should have been: 127.0.0.1 localhost.localdomain localhost Not as you had it (with the bilbo.stow-jones.local). *And*, you're setting yourself up for problems trying to give the name bilbo.stow-jones.local address to both 127.0.0.1 and 192.168.0.3. If you have LAN interfaces, which you appear to do, then there's no reason try and apply a local machine address to the loopback. Only do that if you have no interfaces and want your machine to know itself as something other than localhost.localdomain. Although that's a different problem to what you've brought up, it might be a cause of other problems that bite you, particularly if you've done the same trick on each PC. > When I ping to any of the PC's I get the following:- > [root@bilbo ~]# ping -c4 frodo > ping: unknown host frodo You mentioned that you've checked your /etc/resolv.conf file, but you haven't told us what's in there. Perhaps you expect something different than what's needed. I'd expect it to have one or the other of the following lines in it: search stow-jones.local domain stow-jones.local Your /etc/nsswitch.conf looks like it's set up to query your hosts file before anything else, so it *should* be checking it. Trying to use dig to test things will only help you if you have your local DNS server configured with your machine addresses (and your /etc/resolv.conf file starts off with your local DNS server addresses instead of remote ISP ones), it won't pay any attention to the hosts file (neither do some other things, which is just one reason I stopped playing with my hosts file and did things properly with a DNS server). -- Don't send private replies to my address, the mailbox is ignored. I read messages from the public lists.
