The gethostbyname man page should first and foremost list that the source of the data comes from the NSS plugins. I accept that the man page is intentionally trying to be vague because these things are not guaranteed anywhere, the truth is far more mundane and "default" here IMO applies to a normal glibc installation on Linux, and the fallback is always a localhost nameserver. I suggest the following changes, but feel free to reword as you see fit. Patch against master. Signed-off-by: Carlos O'Donell <carlos@xxxxxxxxxx> diff --git a/man3/gethostbyname.3 b/man3/gethostbyname.3 index 7875f88..59c7bb1 100644 --- a/man3/gethostbyname.3 +++ b/man3/gethostbyname.3 @@ -224,18 +224,20 @@ The domain name queries carried out by .BR gethostbyname () and .BR gethostbyaddr () -use a combination of any or all of the name server +use a combination of any or all of Name Service Switch +.BR nsswitch.conf(5) +configured sources, name servers in \fI/etc/resolv.conf\fP +.BR resolv.conf(5), +a local name server .BR named (8), a broken out line from \fI/etc/hosts\fP, and the Network Information Service (NIS or YP), depending upon the contents of the \fIorder\fP line in .IR /etc/host.conf . -.\" (See -.\" .BR resolv+ (8)). -The default action is to query -.BR named (8), -followed by -.IR /etc/hosts . +The default action is to query the Name Service Switch +.BR nsswitch.conf(5) +configured sources, followed by a local name server +.BR named (8). .PP The \fIhostent\fP structure is defined in \fI<netdb.h>\fP as follows: .sp --- Cheers, Carlos. -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-man" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
