Hi. It seems that if the resolver falls back (at some point) to using /etc/hosts it does differ between absolutely and relatively specified domain names. Typically one has relative domain names in /etc/hosts, for example: 1.2.3.4 test.domain.example If one now pings the relative domain name: # ping test.domain.example this works. If one however pings the absolute domain name (note the "." in the end): ## ping test.domain.example. the address cannot longer be resolved. Cheers, Chris.