Network configuration files ignored

I have a strange problem with my opensuse 11.4 system. Its fully up to date but it won’t respect the following network configuration files:

/etc/hosts
/etc/services
/etc/nsswitch.conf

In nsswitch.conf I have the correct setting regarding DNS lookups:

hosts: files mdns4_minimal [NOTFOUND=return] dns

Yet /etc/hosts is ignored.

Also /etc/services is also ignored because of which whois fails:

wtl:/var/log # whois fun.com
getaddrinfo(whois.crsnic.net): Servname not supported for ai_socktype

And even postfix mail delivery:

May 30 22:48:40 wtl postfix/master[2844]: fatal: 127.0.0.1:smtp: Servname not supported for ai_socktype

Both whois and smtp ports are set correctly in /etc/services.

nicname 43/tcp whois # Who Is
nicname 43/udp whois # Who Is

smtp 25/tcp # Simple Mail Transfer
smtp 25/udp # Simple Mail Transfer

All of the above problems started after I installed NFS server. I uninstalled that but things haven’t gotten better. I have done a lot of zypper refresh; zypper up; to keep the system up to date. I can access the internet alright but can’t do whois queries on the CLI, send email etc.

Please help me fix the above problems.

Reinstalled opensuse 11.4. This fixed the above problems.