I think this started with the Snow Leopard update. Cleaned out the .ssh directory, still having the issue. ~: uname -a Darwin california-example-com.local 10.0.0 Darwin Kernel Version 10.0.0: Fri Jul 31 22:47:34 PDT 2009; root:xnu-1456.1.25~1/RELEASE_I386 i386 ~: ssh -V OpenSSH_5.2p1, OpenSSL 0.9.8k 25 Mar 2009 ~: ls -l ~/.ssh ~: nslookup nevada Server: 10.94.62.3 Address: 10.94.62.3#53 Name: nevada.example.com Address: 10.94.62.3 ~: ssh nevada ssh: Could not resolve hostname nevada: nodename nor servname provided, or not known