There are two ways to specify addresses on the internet (called IP addresses). One is to use the textual address like `ftp.uu.net' and the other is to use the numerical form `192.48.96.9'. Alas, there is no one-to-one correspondence between the numerical addresses and the textual ones, thus a service is required to map one to the other.
The service is performed by one or more special hosts on the network called nameservers. Each host must know how to contact a nameserver or it will probably hang the first time you give it an IP address. You tell it how to contact a nameserver by editing the text-file `/etc/resolv.conf'. This file must contain the domain name for your domain and a list of possible nameservers which can be contacted, in order of priority. Because this is a special file which every host must have, you don't have to use the editing facilities in cfengine explicitly. You can just define the nameservers for each host in the cfengine file and cfengine will do the editing automatically. If you want to change the priority of nameservers later, or even change the list then a simple change of one or two lines in the configuration file will enable you to reconfigure every host on your network automatically without having to do any editing yourself!
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