Making Browsers Honor the DNS SearchDomain?

Craig A. Smith asks: "I've always been able to use simply 'http://www' to get to my company's web site, presumably because my default search domain was 'mycompany.com.' Suddenly my browser started taking me to 'www.www.com' instead. This happened simultaneously in all browsers (tested Mozilla, IE, NS4.7 and NS7.0) an two platforms (RedHat7.2 and Win2k). The odd thing is the command 'nslookup www' (or dig or host) behaves as desired and still resolves to www.mycompany.com so I don't think this is a DNS issue. I've tried various /etc/resolv.conf settings with no luck ('domain mycompany.com' and 'search mycompany.com'). How do I get my browser to apply the default domain before tacking on the www prefix and .com suffix?"

Comments

DNS

[itwerx]

The technical answer:
It's a lot more likely that something changed in the way your machine is resolving DNS. Go talk to your netadmin.

The real answer:
Nice Ask-Slashdot troll! :)

Proxy?

[skinfitz]

You've just got a new web proxy haven't you?

It's probably your browser

[PurpleFloyd]

If dig will give you the address/full DNS name you want, it's probably a "user-friendly" addition to your browser.

I've noticed that browsers haven't required a http:// preceding the address for a long time, nor a slash on the end. While I do this out of habit, it seems most users aren't even accustomed to putting the protocol name in front of a name or address.

I would suggest looking through your browser's documentation and configuration, as there's probably an option to turn off the offending problem.

Note that one way to be sure, however, is to try and ping the server in question. Even if the server doesn't reply to ping requests, ping should give you some sort of address which you can compare to the one you want, without any user-hostility getting in your way.