[squid-users] Squid2.4 & /etc/hosts

Hi All,

I am after some clarification regarding Squid-2.4.STABLE6-6.7.3 and the use
of /etc/hosts.

One of our proxies needs to access a webserver via it's internal address
rather than its world DNS address.
I have added the required information to /etc/hosts, confirmed nsswitch.conf
is checking files before DNS and restarted squid but it does not seem to be
taking.

I have a Squid 2.5 box that uses the host_file attribute in squid.conf and
it works no worries and I am able to see the listing via cachemgr under FQDN
Cache Statistics.

This information is not present in the 2.4STABLE6 version.

Trawling the archives I found this post from Henrik:

"Squid-2.3 defaults to use an internal DNS client implementation, talking
directly to your DNS server.

Squid-2.4 too defaults to using an internal DNS client, but reads
/etc/hosts on startup (I think, or maybe this is only in Squid-2.5?).

--
Henrik Nordstrom"
Is this actually the case? It appears not in my testing. Is there a way I
can add something to the Internal DNS that squid 2.4 uses?
I realise that I can recompile Squid2.4 with --disable-internal-dns, but
this is a production machine so re-compiling and upgrading to 2.5 are not an
option at this point. The network configuration in which the server sits
uses an unusual setup whereby adding an entry to the local DNS server in the
network is not an option. I really require a solution that can be
implemented on the Squid server.
All advice appreciated
Regards
Jay