Hello,
the hosts file can be used for both direction. Canonicalizing an IP to a
hostname will pick the first hostname (alias) in the hosts file. (The
first entry in the first line with the same IP).
Some tools not use the hosts file directly but the resolver library. Then
it depends on the nsswitch.conf file if the "hosts:" database has the
"files" as first argument. (this includes JDK, so we are not completely
offtopic :)
According to the MIT documentation krb5 is doing the lookup and a reverse
lookup, the later can be turned off. It points to getaddrinfo() which will
consult nsswitch.conf (in some cases).
http://web.mit.edu/kerberos/krb5-devel/doc/admin/princ_dns.html
There is also an "ignore_acceptor_hostname" option, but not sure if that
is related to your problem.
Bernd
