> Actually, my understanding of resolv.conf, is that you can set the
> lookup order.  On one of my machines (don't recall if it was linux, NetBSD
> or something else entirely), i had the line:
> 
> hosts bind
> 
> in my resolv.conf.

It must be a non-NetBSD system.  In NetBSD, you can specify the same
lookup order by the following line in /etc/resolv.conf:

lookup file bind

i.e. file (/etc/hosts) first, bind (BIND) next.

ken