UNIX for Advanced & Expert Users

Just recently we have been having some dns issues. Some websites won't work i.e. (www.msn.com, aimexpress.aim.com...) I have manually put A records in my named.db file and in the hosts file to try to get it to work but still they do not work. I have looked up updating my named.ca file for the root servers but I have the most recent, I have checked our firewall to see that nothing is blocked... but I still can't find anything. Thanks for the help

What OS is this?

In my boxes I have a file called /etc/resolv.conf which has a "search" feature to search listed domains tab delimited in the file. You must list a gateway address as well. Not the one you have in your /etc/hosts file.

it looks like this.

#cat /etc/resolv.conf
domain sbc.com
search pacbell.com ameritech.com snet.com # to search each domain for a host used by nslookup or other feature...
nameserver IP # DNS servers to search the internal company network.
nameserver IP
nameserver IP


Also, there is a file on mine called /etc/nsswitch.conf which has a hierarchy, search, can be in any order: nis/files/dns for other hosts, but I think that is more for clustered or for boxes in the same infrastructure.