dsh and hosts without DNS and NIS

[Eric Nodwell <nodwell@physics.ubc.ca>]

I'd like to use dsh on a cluster on a private network (192.168.253.x).
I require neither DNS nor NIS, and the network information is
contained simply in the (unchanging) /etc/hosts file, which is the
same on all machines.

/etc/hosts:

127.0.0.1 localhost
192.168.253.1 piston01 
192.168.253.2 piston02 
192.168.253.3 piston03 

and so on.  If I try to run dsh (for example "dsh -a ls /") it fails
with:

piston01 : rcmd: getaddrinfo: Name or service not known

and messages similar for the other nodes.

I've tried playing around with /etc/host.conf, but it makes no
difference.

Any suggestions?

Thanks,
Eric