[RndTbl] Learning a little about /etc/hosts

Sean Walberg sean at ertw.com
Sat Aug 7 13:19:54 CDT 2010


I don't know the answer to your question, but it seems easy enough to find
out:

(Windows XP SP3)

C:\>ping foo.hhjjhhjjhh.com
Ping request could not find host foo.hhjjhhjjhh.com. Please check the name
and try again.
C:\>echo 127.0.0.1 *.hhjjhhjjhh.com > c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts
C:\>ping foo.hhjjhhjjhh.com
Ping request could not find host foo.hhjjhhjjhh.com. Please check the name
and try again.
C:\>echo 127.0.0.1 foo.hhjjhhjjhh.com >>
c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts
C:\>ping foo.hhjjhhjjhh.com
Pinging foo.hhjjhhjjhh.com [127.0.0.1] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 127.0.0.1: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=128
...

I'll leave it as an exercise to you to test the same on Linux.

BTW, why are you blocking Amazon S3?

Sean

On Sat, Aug 7, 2010 at 1:04 PM, Mike Pfaiffer <high.res.mike at gmail.com>wrote:

>        At the lab the teacher advocates using the Windows equivalent of the
> /etc/hosts file to prevent access to certain sites from classroom
> computers. He and I have been having an ongoing chat about this for a
> few months. I've been reading up on the way the file is used to redirect
> requests to a different address (eg. 127.0.0.1). Is there a difference
> in the way Windows parses the file compared to Linux?
>
>        One reason for the above question is I was thinking it might be
> useful
> to redirect requests to advertising sites to 127.0.0.1 to speed up
> access on days when things seem to crawl. One article I read on Digg
> suggested a lot of the wait time for web pages was due to slow and
> misconfigured ad servers. I found one site which has example files which
> are updated so often. I tried one and I got almost nothing when surfing
> the web. Using the file as a pattern I created a smaller version which
> works well with the chromium browser but fails to display text in firefox.
>
>        These are the lines I've added. Yes I know there are duplicates.
>
> 127.0.0.1       media.fastclick.com media.fastclick.net
> 127.0.0.1       *.tribalfusion.com a.tribalfusion.com
> 127.0.0.1       cdn.optmd.com
> 127.0.0.1       ad.doubleclick.com ad.doubleclick.net *doubleclick.net
> googleads.g.doubleclick.net
> 127.0.0.1       as.casalemedia.com
> 127.0.0.1       ads.adsonar.com
> 127.0.0.1       seeker.dice.com
> 127.0.0.1       townhall.com
> 127.0.0.1       s3.amazonaws.com
> 127.0.0.1       pixel.quantserv.com
> 127.0.0.1       st.blogads.com
> 127.0.0.1       *.rackspacecloud.com
> 127.0.0.1       js.adsonar.com
> 127.0.0.1       ads.pointroll.com
>
>        Would the "*" in the domain name cause problems? Like I said, I used
> the Windows file as an example.
>
>                                Later
>                                Mike
>
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-- 
Sean Walberg <sean at ertw.com>    http://ertw.com/
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