I have a tiny network (3 machines) and therefore have chosen not to use a DNS as i really don't need it. I thought everything was going well as i had defined all machines in /etc/hosts and i could ping them using hostname.mydomain . I started fiddling around with my postfix config and found a problem delivering local mail. I soon found out that "hosts kananga.mydomain" fails. This explains why postfix can't deliver any local mail and keeps on sending them to the ISP mail server instead of handling it itself. I have the relevant entries in /etc/hosts and /etc/network. I have also "order hosts bind" in the /etc/host.conf file. /etc/nsswitch has the entry : hosts :file dns I am *still* able to ping kananga.mydomain successfully. When i try "host -a kananga.mydomain", I get : Host kananga not found: 3(NXDOMAIN) What am i missing here? Thanks. Clifford -- [Insert witty observation here]