Question on DNS setup change not working.

[Tim]

On Sat, 2011-09-03 at 11:36 +1000, Michael D. Setzer II wrote:
> I was under the impression that the resolv.conf 
> with hosts bind was also for dns.

resolv.conf is used to tell your network the address of a DNS server,
and it can list the domain names to be added to hostnames, for
abbreviated queries.

i.e. "ping printserver" can become "ping printerserver.example.com"

The hosts file is used by anything which can use the hosts data to
resolve a name.  e.g. Your web browser.

The BIND DNS server uses its own configuration files to give answers to
queries.  In general, it looks for its own DNS record files, then
queries external (to itself) DNS servers.  The hosts file isn't part of
its workings.  There are other (simple) DNS servers which can look at
the hosts file for resolving addresses.

Amongst other things, the /etc/nsswitch.conf file lists how various
things will resolve queries.  Such as your web browser's query for a
domain may get resolved by first looking in the hosts file, then trying
a DNS server.  The "hosts:" line will configure how names are generally
resolved, there are other configuration lines to choose how other things
do their look-ups.

Squid has its own resolver tool, and I can't recall how it normally
works, but I'd be surprised if you can't configure how it goes about it.

It shouldn't be necessary to play around with restarting networks, or
rebooting, for a change in your hosts file to be noticed.  However,
certain applications may need restarting.  For instance, if you'd used
Firefox to browse www.example.com, the IP would have been looked up at
the time, and the answer will be held onto for the session.  So, changes
to the IP won't get noticed, during that time.

-- 
[tim at localhost ~]$ uname -r
2.6.27.25-78.2.56.fc9.i686

Don't send private replies to my address, the mailbox is ignored.  I
read messages from the public lists.