On Oct 4, 6:59 am, "andrew.bell...@gmail.com"
<andrew.bell...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Oct 3, 8:48 pm, Barry Margolin <bar...@alum.mit.edu> wrote:
>
> > In article <1191427807.683779.81...@o80g2000hse.googlegroups. com>,
>
> > "andrew.bell...@gmail.com" <andrew.bell...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > Hi,
>
> > > I've got a Linux machine where ping doesn't seem to resolve a hostname
> > > if the full domainname isn't specified. Other programs do fine. For
> > > instance:
>
> > What's in your /etc/resolv.conf, and what does the "hosts" line of
> > /etc/nsswitch.conf contain?
>
> After I posted this I realized that this was probably the wrong group
> - apologies, but thanks for the reply. Here are answers to your
> questions (and more).
>
> $ cat /etc/resolv.conf
> search cssm.iastate.edu iastate.edu
> nameserver 129.186.142.200
> nameserver 129.186.140.200
> nameserver 129.186.1.200
>
> $ cat /etc/nsswitch.conf | grep hosts
> hosts: files dns
>
> $ cat /etc/hosts
> # Do not remove the following line, or various programs
> # that require network functionality will fail.
> 127.0.0.1 localhost
>
> 172.16.11.2 galaga-pvt.cssm.iastate.edu galaga-pvt
> 172.16.11.3 digdug-pvt.cssm.iastate.edu digdug-pvt
> 172.16.11.4 qbert-pvt.cssm.iastate.edu qbert-pvt
> 172.16.11.5 frogger-pvt.cssm.iastate.edu frogger-pvt
> 172.16.11.6 pacman-pvt.cssm.iastate.edu pacman-pvt
>
> $ nslookup frogger
> Server: 129.186.142.200
> Address: 129.186.142.200#53
>
> Name: frogger.cssm.iastate.edu
> Address: 129.186.6.75
>
> I'm trying to thing of a reason why ping would use some different
> resolution mechanism than ssh. Could this be an IPv4 vs. IPv6 thing?
>
> Thanks in advance,
>
> -- Andrew Bell
> andrew.bell...@gmail.com

Just a suggestion..

Try running "strace" on the ping to see what the resolver library is
adding to it.
That might give you an idea.

Like:
strace ping frogger.