my fresh leopard install doesn't have an /etc/resolv.conf link by default. also, the sun ResolverConfiguration class returns an empty list of servers. if this happens, that method fails and falls back to looking for a platform specific thing. for mac os x, i also made it look for /var/run/resolv.conf which does exist for me. i'm not sure how that works out if you aren't using dhcp. it may be best to be parsing the output of scutil.
I didn't see this behavior with a fresh leopard install, and also haven't seen it with a fresh snow leopard install. I haven't seen any OS X machine without /etc/resolv.conf .
Dealing with an empty result from the Sun ResolverConfiguration class seems reasonable; I'll commit something.
Ticket moved from /p/dnsjava/patches/15/