Snow Leopard - resolving hostnames issue

Question

This worked in Leopard, although since Snowie came along …

I have a Location setup with a DNS server to use [eg 10.0.0.17] , and a search string [eg sub.dom.ain.com]

In the terminal:

$ nslookup cake
Server 10.0.0.17
Address: 10.0.0.17#53

Name: cake.sub.dom.ain.com
Address: 10.0.0.38


So works like a charm. Although if I just the hostname cake in any other application within OSX - such as Safari/CoRD, they simply can't resolve the hostname. I have to instead use the FQDN cake.sub.dom.ain.com - why is this so? Why did this work in Leopard and is now broken?

Would love a solution.

Thanks

Answer 1

Justin was onto the right idea here, but didn't carry it to the finish line:

In Advanced » DNS, add your sub.dom.ain.com to the Search Domains, and your problem will be solved.

Answer 2

This may not be relevant, but I had a problem when I upgraded where having a custom DNS server in my network settings prevented it from using the DNS servers specified in DHCP from my ISP.

Answer 3

When I checked my DNS settings, I noticed that under Advanced there is a Search Domains area, which appears to be blank by default.