Network – Configuration Files

/etc/hosts : Mapping between IP address and names and is used for name resolution.
Ex: 10.10.8.163 slackware.mydomain slackware
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/etc/nsswitch.conf: System Databases and Name Service Switch configuration file .Use by various system library. /etc/nsswitch.conf fle supersedes /etc/host.conf
Ex:
root@slack:~# cat /etc/nsswitch.conf
#
# /etc/nsswitch.conf
#
# An example Name Service Switch config file. This file should be
# sorted with the most-used services at the beginning.
#
# The entry '[NOTFOUND=return]' means that the search for an
# entry should stop if the search in the previous entry turned
# up nothing. Note that if the search failed due to some other reason
# (like no NIS server responding) then the search continues with the
# next entry.
#
# Legal entries are:
#
# nisplus or nis+ Use NIS+ (NIS version 3)
# nis or yp Use NIS (NIS version 2), also called YP
# dns Use DNS (Domain Name Service)
# files Use the local files
# [NOTFOUND=return] Stop searching if not found so far
#

# passwd: files nis
# shadow: files nis
# group: files nis

passwd: compat
group: compat

hosts: files dns
networks: files

services: files

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/etc/host.conf : This file controls name resolution sources for pre-glibc2 system.
Ex:
root@slack:~# cat /etc/host.conf
order hosts, bind
multi on

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/etc/resolv.conf: Resolver configuration file. Provide access to DNS.
Ex:
search mydomain
nameserver 10.10.1.2 # DNS Server
nameserver 10.10.1.3 # DNS Server

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/etc/networks: Network name information.
Ex:
root@slack:~# cat /etc/networks
#
# networks This file describes a number of netname-to-address
# mappings for the TCP/IP subsystem. It is mostly
# used at boot time, when no name servers are running.
#

loopback 127.0.0.0
localnet 127.0.0.0
mylan 10.10.0.0
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