Note: subject changed to reflect the micro-focus of this sub-thread... Anay> ... currently the state of the individual name-services and the Anay> state of nsswitch.conf are separate from each other. I can create a Anay> /etc/resolv.conf and thats all that dns/client needs to be online- it Anay> doesn't mean nsswitch.conf actually includes 'dns' as a backend for Anay> hosts resolution.
Darren> I believe this is the correct behaviour. For example Kerberos makes Darren> direct use of DNS (it is required to to function properly) rather Darren> than going via the nsswitch. In theory (and for some customers in Darren> practice) this means that dns/client needs to be online even if Darren> nsswitch.conf doesn't contain a reference to dns. James> Also true of sendmail... Not exactly true of sendmail; it does have knowledge of DNS APIs (beyond getXbyY) and does call them directly (e.g., to look up MX records, which are DNS only), but if "dns" is not listed as a method on the "hosts:" line in nsswitch.conf, then sendmail does not use DNS at all. -- John
