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 [NOTFOUND=return] files

or

hosts: nisplus dns [NOTFOUND=return] files