OMG..I'm so freaking embarrassed... I transposed the hosts file and put the host name before the IP....
I apologize to everyone for my ignorance, once I put the IP first in the hosts.conf file everything worked.
Might take me awhile to pull my foot out of mouth.
thanks for the tip mglae, I wasn't familiar with that command. I ran it and get the same results though unfortunately...
# getent hosts <host1>
<IP1> host1.subdomain.domain.com host1.com host1.domain.com
The addon I use doesn't use that command (I believe) to resolve the name so even if it did work I don't think it would solve my problem with the addon reaching a specific IP based on the hostname...
Going to backup all of my settings and so forth and try rebuilding from scratch...
Thanks vpeter, I have already tried both suggestions with no luck. hosts.conf updates the hosts file correctly after reboot but a nslookup <host> shows it's using DNS for resolution instead of local hosts file. To add nameserver to LibreELEC settings I had to use static instead of DHCP but even though it still bypassed the local hosts file even when I did that. So frustrating...can't figure it out. It "should" work but just doesn't for some bizarre reason.
Seems no matter what I do it bypasses the hosts file and only uses DNS for name resolution. I have an addon that requires specific name to IP resolution and the DNS my gateway uses (VPN) is not something I have any access to.
sorry for my ignorance but I don't see the correlation between connman and the JEOS failing to use the hosts file first for name resolution instead of DNS....
LibreELEC 9.0.1 on RaspPi 3+
(didn't work on 8.2.5 either so I upgraded to 9.0.1)
updated hosts file via '/storage/.config/hosts.conf' rebooted
name resolves using DNS provided by DHCP server. It "should" look at the hosts file first per the nsswitch.conf file:
However, when I try to ping it, I get the DNS IP returned instead of what I set manually...
# cat /etc/nsswitch.conf
# /etc/nsswitch.conf
#
# Example configuration of GNU Name Service Switch functionality.
#
passwd: files
group: files
shadow: files
gshadow: files
hosts: files mdns_minimal [NOTFOUND=return] dns <<<---------HERE
networks: files dns
protocols: files
services: files
ethers: files
rpc: files
netgroup: files
# cat /etc/hosts
# hosts.conf
# This configuration file allows you to manually map hostnames to
# IP addresses
# Format: <ipaddress> <hostname1> <hostname2>
# Example: 192.168.0.3 libreelec libreelec.mynetwork
# NOTE: do not edit /etc/hosts directly
# edit /storage/.config/hosts.conf then reboot
<host1> <IP2>
<host2> <IP2>
<host3> <IP2>
127.0.0.1 localhost <hostname>
::1 localhost ip6-localhost ip6-loopback <hostname>
# ping <host1>
PING <host1> (<IP1>): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from <IP1>: seq=0 ttl=246 time=36.021 ms <<<-------expected outcome is <IP2> from hosts file.
# nslookup <host1>
Server: <DNS#1 IP> <<<--------This should be 'localhost' I believe...
Address 1: <DNS#1 IP> <DNS#1 HOSTNAME>
Name: <host1>
Address 1: <IP1> server-<IP1>.<domain>
Obviously names and IP's have been redacted to protect the innocent. 
I would like to add 127.0.0.1 as a nameserver in my resolv.conf file but it gets overwritten every time I reboot. I'd also like to keep the other three nameservers it gets from DHCP as well.
Any help on what else I can try or look at to get this thing to resolve the name from the hosts file properly?
Tried removing the 'r' from connman.service that I saw in another thread for caching DNS but that didn't work for my case.
TIA!
