Problem resolving sources.lists

[John Cichy <john@greengator.com>]

Hello,

I'm not sure if this is the correct list to be asking this question, so if it 
is not, my feelings will not be hurt if you yell at me.

I have a box that I just converted to debian (mail server) on my NAT'd DMZ 
network. I have a local debian mirror on my DMZ. The mirror is also NAT'd to 
a local network IP. I listed the mirror server in the mail server's hosts 
file. When I attempt to have dselect update the package list, it resolves the 
mirror server (through dns rather then hosts file) to the public address and 
will not connect. I can't put the local IP address in the sources.list file 
because the mirror server is a virtual server on my web server. My host.conf 
has 'hosts,dns' and and when I try to ping the mirror by hostname it resolves 
as expected to the local IP address.

Is the any way to get the package management system to use the hosts file 
first to resolve rather then going straight to dns.

TIA,
John