Unix ping and host commands result in different IP addresses for the same domain name

Question

My understanding is that the unix ping and host commands should generate the same IP address given the same domain. If you look at these two commands:

$ ping api.dev.myserver.com
PING api.dev.myserver.com (10.11.12.15): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 10.11.12.15: icmp_seq=0 ttl=64 time=0.303 ms
(...)

$ host api.dev.myserver.com
api.dev.myserver.com has address 69.68.153.135

The first is my local development VM, and shows the desirable IP as I've specified in my /etc/hosts file. The second shows the live box, circumventing my /etc/hosts file. I have flushed my DNS cache to verify that's not causing the difference.

Answer 1

the host command (and nslookup command) ignore /etc/hosts, as you've found. They work against nameservers (DNS), not local files.

pretty sure getent ahosts (host) will also use /etc/hosts, like ping does.

Answer 2

Host is a dns query application and does not look in the hosts file. See http://linux.die.net/man/1/host