/etc/hosts doesn't affect PHP

I'm having problems with the hosts file and PHP. When running the PHP code as root, the entries from /etc/host开发者_JAVA百科s are read. But not when running the code as my user, or from apache.

root@server:/# cat /etc/hosts
127.0.0.1       mydomain.com

root@server:/# php -r "echo gethostbyname('mydomain.com');"
127.0.0.1

markus@server:/$ php -r "echo gethostbyname('mydomain.com');"
xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx

Any idea why this is?

Did you make sure your /etc/hosts file is world readable?

chmod a+r /etc/hosts