Sun DNS resolver question

[James A. Harvey]

I have a problem with domain name resolving on a Sun Sparcstation running
SunOS 4.0.3 that is driving me mad.  I have read and re-read the Sun manuals
and the man pages on the system and cannot figure out what I am doing wrong.

The machine in question, hummer.iupui.edu, is the primary nameserver for the
domain iupui.edu.  BIND (named) is running just fine and the machine responds
to DNS queries from other hosts just fine.  The file /etc/resolv.conf exists,
is world readable, and contains the two lines:

domain iupui.edu
nameserver 127.0.0.1

The nslookup utility appears to function exactly as expected, that is, it
uses "iupui.edu" as the default domain, and the loopback address for the
default name server.  However, none of the TCP/IP client programs try to
do DNS queries at all; if the hostname given isn't in /etc/hosts, they all
lose with an "unknown host" error.  How does the resolver know to use the
/etc/hosts file or a domain name server?  I'm missing something here...
Thanks in advance of any help, and please cc: any replies to one of the
addresses below, as I don't get to read INFO-UNIX very often.

James Harvey, IUPUI Computing Services   IJAH400 at IUPUI.EDU | HARVEY at INDIANA.EDU
799 West Michigan Street, ET Room 1023          UUCP: {...}!iuvax!iugate!harvey
Indianapolis, IN  46202-5160  (317)274-0747            BITNET:  IJAH400 at INDYVAX