I'm having issues with one of my servers taking a long time to look up host names. This is an Ubuntu 12.04 box, so I've tried following the new resolvconf directives.

In my /etc/network/interfaces file, I defined my name servers like this:

auto eth0
iface eth0 inet static
 address someaddress
 netmask 255.255.255.0
 gateway 198.58.103.1
 dns-nameservers 74.14.179.5 72.14.188.5

In my /etc/resolv.conf, I see these name servers, like this:

# Dynamic resolv.conf(5) file for glibc resolver(3) generated by resolvconf(8)
#     DO NOT EDIT THIS FILE BY HAND -- YOUR CHANGES WILL BE OVERWRITTEN
nameserver 74.14.179.5
nameserver 72.14.188.5

On another box, I edited the resolv.conf directly as directed by my hosts' setup help files. It looks like this:

domain members.linode.com
search members.linode.com
nameserver 72.14.179.5
nameserver 72.14.188.5
options rotate

This second box has no issues with host name look ups and responds quite quickly.

Could not having the domain and search directives make my look ups slow? By slow, I mean it's taking anywhere from 5 to 15 seconds to find the IP address of a host.