Description of problem: 
 
rsync uses getaddrinfo to determine the ip of the remote host name. 
if /etc/nsswitch.conf contains the line 
 
    hosts: files nisplus dns 
 
then rsync will fail in getaddrinfo(). other programs (host, ping) succeed. 
 
Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): 
 
glibc-2.4-4 
 
How reproducible: 
 
always, but a test program does not manage to reproduce. 
 
 
Steps to Reproduce: 
1. sed -i 's/^hosts.*/hosts: files nisplus dns' /etc/nsswitch.conf 
2. rsync distro.ibiblio.org:: 
 
   
Actual results: 
 
rsync complains 
 
Expected results: 
 
rsync lists hosts 
 
Additional info: 
 
some debugging showed that the hosts line is mis-parsed, but I'm not sure. 
strace -e trace=open shows that the dns module is never loaded. 
 
the problem occurs on i386 and x86_64.