debian 3.0 connection oddity

[Josh Bauman <baumanj@vuser.vu.union.edu>]

Battled long and hard today with a very strange problem on my Debian 
unstable 3.0 box.  

I had my internet connection working fine and then went to go use mozilla 
again and found name resolution not to be working; that is, i could not 
reach any sites.  I then tried Lynx and i could access most every site on the 
Internet: nytimes.com, slashdot.org, freshmeat.net, you name it.  So, as 
it happens, i dump my arp cache, change ip's, check dns, redo my interface 
settings, change nics, change station cables, check my kernel, and still 
nothing.  After four hours of work i could reach any given site via lynx, 
yet mozilla / phoenix could get nowhere, except by IP.  So i figure DNS if 
messed, which it turns out it wasn't, other linux boxes were getting there 
fine.  In a last hurrah I dumped my host table and viola, mozilla / 
phoenix as well as lynx worked like a charm.  Thinking i had made a dump 
mistake i tried the host table which I had been using from the beginning, 
the one which had cause the problem, untainted, and from a very working 
*nix mail server, and sure enough, i lost name resolution in mozilla.  

I was happy that i got NS working again, but the explanation baffles me, 
especially why a previously healthy host table would screw up dns, 
especially with the existence of a working resolv.conf.  

Any help is appreciated.  Thanks,

Josh 

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   "if it ain't broke, hit it again"
            Joshua Bauman                 
baumanj@union.edu      darwin@darw1n.net         
	baumanj@vu.union.edu
            www.darw1n.net