macos - DNS lookup fails but nslookup works

I have DNS lookup problems on my internal network. I'm using an internal DNS server with the IP 192.168.1.254.

If I use nslookup everything works like it should:

>hawk:~ user$ nslookup publicwebserver.domain.local
>Server:        192.168.1.254
>
>Address:   192.168.1.254#53
>
>Name:  publicwebserver.domain.local
>
> Address: 192.168.1.21

My problem is that no other program seems to be able to lookup the DNS name:

hawk:~ user$ ping publicwebserver.domain.local

ping: cannot resolve publicwebserver.domain.local: Unknown host

It's like this for all command line programs and e.g. Firefox. If I fire up Network Utility, I get the same problem on the Lookup tab (probably since it uses nslookup or host on the back-end).

Has any of you seen this issue before?

Answer

It seems as if this is due to me pointing to both internal and external dns servers on my client, as mentioned here. After I removed all external DNS servers from my list of servers, everything works as it should.