- Make sure /etc/hosts gets used before we go to the network. It seems that under some (all?) circumstances, the res_* functions are DNS ONLY - ie, they ignore /etc/nsswitch.conf and /etc/hosts. I can't confirm this - documentation on the resolver is sketchy (no surprise there). If res_* can't be made to use /etc/nsswitch.conf and /etc/hosts on ALL systems, then we have two options: - Load /etc/nsswitch.conf and /etc/hosts ourself, and search there before hitting the network. - Don't do SRV lookups at all if there's no nameserver specified in /etc/resolv.conf, and use gethostbyname() for the A lookup. Both these suck.