Re: gethostbyname() problem

[frieduck]

As ikegami has pointed out, your system name resolution isn't doing what you want, so Perl won't either, as it uses the same underlying libraries to do so.

On many/most *nix systems, name resolution is controlled by entries in /etc/nsswitch.conf. You'll find a line there for "hosts" that will control where your system looks to resolve names, and in what order it does. For your system to look at /etc/hosts first, you'll want your file to have a line that looks like:

hosts:      files dns

This line essentially says, "look at /etc/hosts, and if you don't find it there, use DNS".

If your /etc/nsswitch.conf file looks right, your /etc/hosts may have other issues that prevent that line from matching.