Hi, I wanted to know if the following was possible on a linux (in particular) box: Assume I have (at most), all of these entries in /etc/hosts custom1.company.com nnn.nnn.nnn.nnn custom2.company.com nnn.nnn.nnn.nnn default.company.com nnn.nnn.nnn.nnn where nnn is some specific IPv4 address number I want to lookup the hosts in say this order: custom2.company.com custom1.company.com default.company.com Now sometimes, I may only have the default entry, and sometimes I may have the custom1 and / or custom2 entries also in /etc/hosts. So, any combination from 0 to all 3 entries is possible at any point in time. This configuration would not change often, but any combination of entries is possible. If the custom2 entry is not found, I want to try custom1, and if not ok, then I want to try default. Importantly, I do _not_ want _any_ DNS lookup to be performed for _these_ _specific_ host lookups, because I want an immediate failure if the entry is not defined in /etc/hosts. Note: I want an _immediate_ failure initially, _and_ for every lookup thereafter - an initial DNS lookup that fails after a DNS lookup timeout, and then perhaps caches that failure result is no good, because every lookup must respond immediately (and of course /etc/hosts and DNS service entries can change at any time so even then, cacheing is not useful). Assume that I am using software that I cannot change, and so workarounds like actually reading the /etc/hosts file to see which entries exist, cannot be wired into the software. I am thinking of something functionally like a like /etc/disable_dns_lookup that I can also copy all 3 of the above entries to, and linux will _never_ try DNS if the entries appear in /etc/disable_dns_lookup. Any solutions / ideas ? Thanks Andrew Message sent using MelbPC WebMail Server