Host file for browser?

Bill Sconce sconce at in-spec-inc.com
Thu Dec 9 16:55:01 EST 2004


On Thu, 9 Dec 2004 12:49:29 -0500
"jason" <jason at kernbuilt.com> wrote:

> All,
> 
> I have several boxes kobbled together along with my web server living
> happily behind my firewall. In order to get windows (IE, NETSCAP et al) to
> see the sites served up on the web server I have to adjust the hosts file in
> /WINDOWS/system32/drivers/etc/ telling the specific local IP address for a
> specific site. Is there a similar way to tell Linux (RH9) to do the same?
> (galeon, mozilla et al).
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Jason Kern
> 
> KernBuilt.com


Hi, Jason -

The other replies are correct (that the thing you want is the /etc/hosts
file, and that it was "etc" on Unix before that other OS swiped it).

To leave just a little more (hopefully useful) information in this
mailing list, following are a hypothetical sample of the contents of
an /etc/hosts file (including a fake top-level domain, as might be used
for debugging/devoloping a Web site) and a clip from the material which
"man hosts" displays.  (The last paragraph probably describes your
situation (and mine)).

-Bill


# Sample /etc/hosts
172.16.1.1      igor
172.16.1.2      drfrank
172.16.1.2      bdawson.com
172.16.1.7      laptop
127.0.0.1       localhost   localhost.localdomain


# man hosts

NAME
       hosts - The static table lookup for host names

SYNOPSIS
       /etc/hosts

DESCRIPTION
       This manual page describes the format of the /etc/hosts file. This file
       is a simple text file that associates IP addresses with hostnames,  one
       line per IP address. For each host a single line should be present with
       the following information:

              IP_address canonical_hostname aliases

       Fields of the entry are separated by any number of  blanks  and/or  tab
       characters.  Text  from  a "#" character until the end of the line is a
       comment, and is ignored.
       ...
       The Berkeley Internet Name Domain (BIND) Server implements the Internet
       name  server  for UNIX systems. It replaces the /etc/hosts file or host
       name lookup, and frees a host from relying on /etc/hosts  being  up  to
       date and complete.

       In  modern  systems,  even though the host table has been superseded by
       DNS, it is still widely used for

       bootstrapping
              Most systems have a small host table  containing  the  name  and
              address  information  for  important hosts on the local network.
              This is useful when DNS is not running, for example during  sys-
              tem bootup.
              ...
       isolated nodes
              Very small sites that are isolated from the network use the host
              table  instead  of DNS. If the local information rarely changes,
              and the network is not connected to  the  internet,  DNS  offers
              little advantage.



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