I added the following line to my resolv.conf to allow for shorthand querying servers on my local domain.
search local.
If I have a server named myserver.local I can ping the server using "ping myserver", however if I try to "ping myserver.local" it stalls and fails to return an IP address. Pinging other hosts, such as google.com works as expected.
Is there a way that I can make both "ping myserver.local" and "ping myserver" work correctly?
.local
? Or are you using avahi/bonjour/zeroconf. Zeroconf is NOT DNS, so the configuration for the DNS resolver is probably not going to be very useful for you. If you actually have a DNS zone, and you have disabled any Zeroconf facilities in your systems, then ignore my comment.