Re: resolv.conf

[George Bonser <grep@shorelink.com>]

On Wed, 24 Mar 1999, Shao Zhang wrote:

> 
> "on a normal configured system, you don't need this file". So what is a
> 
> normal configured system??
> 
>     Also, in Windoze, I don't need to put in the dns search entries. But in linux,
> 
> I must put them in resolv.conf. Why?
> 
>     In case I must need a resolv.conf, and my isp doesn't even need one, what number
> 
> should I put under nameserver, search &domain??
> 
>     Thanks


You need a resolv.conf if you want to use DNS to look up hostnames.
resolv.conf is the file that tells the system what your nameserver's
address is.  You do the same thing in Windows when you set up networking.
In the DNS setup, you enter a name server (DNS server) to tell Windows the
address of the machine it should use.

The only time you would not need resolv.conf is if you are using NIS with
an NIS server that does dns lookups if the requested host is not in the
hosts map.  Also, you could put every hostname in /etc/hosts and not need
DNS but your hosts file would be very large and it would take several
years to type the information.