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1.3.3. Name Service Switch Configuration


The order in which your system selects a method of resolving hostnames to IP addresses is controlled by the Name Service Switch (NSS) configuration file /etc/nsswitch.conf. As mentioned in the previous section, typically static hostnames defined in the systems /etc/hosts file have precedence over names resolved from DNS. The following is an example of the line responsible for this order of hostname lookups in the file /etc/ nsswitch.conf.


hosts: files mdns4_minimal [NOTFOUND=return] dns mdns4


files first tries to resolve static hostnames located in /etc/hosts.

mdns4_minimal attempts to resolve the name using Multicast DNS.

[NOTFOUND=return] means that any response of notfound by the preceding mdns4_minimal process should be treated as authoritative and that the system should not try to continue hunting for an answer.

dns represents a legacy unicast DNS query.

mdns4 represents a Multicast DNS query.


To modify the order of the above mentioned name resolution methods, you can simply change the hosts: string to the value of your choosing. For example, if you prefer to use legacy Unicast DNS versus Multicast DNS, you can change the string in /etc/nsswitch.conf as shown below.


hosts: files dns [NOTFOUND=return] mdns4_minimal mdns4


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