Clients Can Find Machine by Name but Server Cannot

Symptoms

DNS clients can find machines by either IP address or by host name, but the server can only find machines by their IP addresses.

Probable cause and solution

This is most likely caused by omitting DNS from the hosts line of the server's nsswitch.conf file. For example, a bad hosts line might look like this: hosts: files

When using DNS you must include dns in the hosts record of every machine's nsswitch.conf file. For example:

hosts: dns nisplus files

or

hosts: nisplus dns files