host.conf does not refer to resolv.conf at all and vice versa, it might not be obvious by reading the man pages that host.conf is the legacy configuration file. At least the "order" option in host.conf is completely ignored although the man pages describes it like any other option. There was a patch to address this sent earlier but it wasn't updated based on review and after that no progress: http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.man/3413 Please clarify host.conf and resolv.conf relationship and status in the related man pages, and update the description for obsolete and deprecate options as needed. Thanks.
Stéphane has done updates on this area recently and I think this bug can be closed, see especially the two following changes which address the issues mentioned in the bug description: http://git.kernel.org/cgit/docs/man-pages/man-pages.git/commit/?id=7b46b4fae359c9525c9d51ba18df5c46bb85f7dc http://git.kernel.org/cgit/docs/man-pages/man-pages.git/commit/?id=e51f148aa1040a89485a3c740410108a56db4144 Thanks Stéphane.