[Techtalk] ssh and name resolution

[Maria McKinley]

Patricia Fraser wrote:
> 
> It doesn't seem *very* likely, but on my Debian machine,
> network-manager overrides /etc/network/interfaces - the cure mentioned
> most often on the Debian list is to remove network-manager. Do you have
> it installed/is it running?
> 
> All the best,
> 
> 
> 

I think that was the problem with the other machine that had dhcp 
problems, but rebooting seems to be all this machine needed for the dhcp 
problem, at least so far so good...

I have also resolved the ssh problem, but I don't understand it. The 
problem was this line in nsswitch.conf:

hosts:          files mdns4_minimal [NOTFOUND=return] dns mdns4

when I change it to this, ssh works:
hosts:          files dns

what I don't understand is why the top line works for some of my 
machines, but not others. Also, does it matter? What is the point of the 
top line?

thanks,
maria