hosts file is not read

[Petri Rosenström]

Binary package hint: base-files

Problem is atleast on ubuntu 9.04. Noticed while using a hosts file and dnsmasq dns and dhcp server. I wanted the DNS-server to reply first based on my hosts file but it didn't read this file it only used the dns servers replies.

Orginal file
cat /etc/host.conf
# The "order" line is only used by old versions of the C library.
order hosts,bind
multi on

How it should be. The comma is not allowed in the configuration, only allowed is # and whitespace.
cat /etc/host.conf
# The "order" line is only used by old versions of the C library.
order hosts bind
multi on

[Ralph Corderoy (ralph-inputplus)]

Hi Petri, Are you saying removing the comma fixed your problem? /etc/nsswitch.conf exists now to determine the resolver's order, see nsswitch.conf(5).

[Petri Rosenström (petri-rosenstrom)]

Yes, that was the solution to the problem. I am not using Ubuntu any longer so this isn't a issue for me anymore.

Thanks for the reply

[Steve Langasek (vorlon)]

The documented syntax of /etc/host.conf, per the host.conf(5) manpage, is to use a comma-separated list of keywords. It sounds like you were using some other software that parses this file incorrectly.

Nothing to fix in base-files.