[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
> ...
>
> I'll leave it as an exercise to you to test the same on Linux.
>
> BTW, why are you blocking Amazon S3?
>
> Sean

	Immensely interesting results... Apparently the "*" is treated as an 
actual character rather than as a wildcard. Judging from your results 
the example I was using was wrong. I took out all the entries with the 
"*". I'll try it out for a few weeks and see what more I can learn.

	Unfortunately the 64bit version of Firefox still didn't display text. I 
commented out all the added sites and still didn't get any text. What 
solved the problem was going into the preferences and telling the 
program to use my fonts rather than let the site select their own. The 
32bit version of Firefox was working fine before so if it ain't broke, 
don't fix it.

				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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