[RndTbl] Learning a little about /etc/hosts

[Mike Pfaiffer]

On 10-08-07 01:19 PM, Sean Walberg wrote:
> 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
> ...

	That never occurred to me. I'll give it a try when I get back.

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

	That may resolve one problem. Thanks.

> BTW, why are you blocking Amazon S3?

	It was appearing as an ad server when chromium was loading an unrelated 
web page. Besides I don't order anything from Amazon. I thought the 
domain was actually amazonaws.com and unrelated to Amazon...

	FYI, that example I mentioned earlier had listed over 1500 ad servers.

> Sean

				Later
				Mike



> 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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