/etc/hosts
Hostname database (UNIX)
Name:
/etc/hosts
Description:
The /etc/hosts file contains information regarding the known hosts on the network. For each host, a single line should be present with the following information:
internet_address official_host_name aliases
Items are separated by any number of spaces or tabs, or both;
however, spaces or tabs aren't allowed before the IP address.
A #
indicates the beginning of a comment;
any characters after a #
, up to the end of the line,
aren't interpreted by routines that search the file.
If you're using a name server, this file provides a backup when the server isn't running. In this case, you should include only a few addresses in this file. These include addresses for the local interfaces that ifconfig needs at boot time and a few machines on the local network.
Network addresses are specified in the conventional
(dot) notation using the
inet_addr() (I page)
routine from the internet address manipulation functions.
Hostnames may contain any printable character other than a field delimiter, newline, or comment character.
.
For more information, see DNS and BIND by Paul Albitz and Cricket Liu, O'Reilly & Associates (ISBN 1-56592-010-4).