/etc/resolv.conf not there with potato

[Lyall Ward <law@osgiliath.ath.cx>]

Hi,

I am just learning how things work in debian and have come across a
problem. There is no resolv.conf. I have tried just creating it and while
this fixes the problem of the file not being there, nothing seems to use
it(Eg I still have to ping by IP address and nslookup thinks the default
namserver is 0.0.0.0). The file I created is world readable.

Is there a package I may not have installed, which will give me proper
usage of resolv.conf? 

Any sugestions?

Thanks in advance,
Lyall