Unable to lookup host registered in hosts file

[Edi CAHYADI]

Hi All,

I have 2 servers:
hostA: Solaris 8
hostB: HP-UX 10.20

>From hostA, I can't lookup hostB even though I put its entry in /etc/hosts
file.

root at hostA:/> host hostB
......
*** <DNSserver> can't find hostB: Non-existent host/domain

Nsswitch.conf is configured to search file first:
root at hostA:/> grep ^hosts /etc/nsswitch.conf
hosts:      files dns

But ping works:
root at hostA:/> ping -s hostB
PING hostB: 56 data bytes
64 bytes from hostB (<hostB's IP>): icmp_seq=0. time=0. ms
64 bytes from hostB (<hostB's IP>): icmp_seq=1. time=0. ms
64 bytes from hostB (<hostB's IP>): icmp_seq=2. time=0. ms
^C
----hostB PING Statistics----
3 packets transmitted, 3 packets received, 0% packet loss
round-trip (ms)  min/avg/max = 0/0/0

Can anybody tell me why is that so, and how to solve it such that host lookup
can work just like nslookup in HP Unix?

Regards,
Edi