why does nslookup return error 'can't find host'?

Question

On a test VM, I have setup the /etc/hosts to resolve the machine name.

Why is it that nslookup is unable to find the server?

$hostname  
foo

$hostname -f  
foo

$cat /etc/hosts  
10.2.192.62   foo   foo.openstacklocal sdb nid01 nid02 nid03 nid04  
127.0.0.1     localhost localhost.localdomain localhost4 localhost4.localdomain4  
::1   localhost localhost.localdomain localhost6 localhost6.localdomain6

$uname -n  
foo

$ping foo  
PING foo (10.2.192.62) 56(84) bytes of data.  
64 bytes from foo (10.2.192.62): icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=0.028 ms  

$nslookup foo  
Server:     10.0.0.2  
Address:    10.0.0.2#53  
** server can't find foo: NXDOMAIN 

My understanding of nslookup is that is should query the dns server (or /etc/hosts) to find the machine name.

Why in this case am I unable to resolve foo ?

Edit1
All these commands are run from inside the vm (foo)

Answer 1

Its very simple, the DNS resolver (10.0.0.2) does not have an entry for foo.

nslookup does not consider /etc/hosts, it is specifically to check for DNS entries against name servers (thats the ns in nslookup).

Since your DNS server does not have an entry for foo, the name resolution fails.