I'm not as adept at HP/UX before 10.20 (my first
experience with the OS),
 but I understand 8.0 "fails over" to /etc/hosts if it has some issues with
 DNS. Fine, but how can I get it to switch *back*? There's no
 /etc/nsswitch.conf and I don't think this version supports it anyway. 
  From
https://docstore.mik.ua/orelly/networking_2ndEd/dns/ch06_04.htm
 Before HP-UX 10.10, you could only use nsswitch.conf to configure the
 order of resolution for the hosts source. From 10.10 on, you can also
 use nsswitch.conf to configure resolution order for the services,
 networks, protocols, rpc, and netgroup sources. hosts: dns
 [NOTFOUND=return] nis [NOTFOUND=return] files" 
  Appreciated, but from the same
resource,
        "HP-UX 10.00 introduced Solaris's nsswitch.conf functionality"
 so this won't apply to HP/UX 8.