When is it ok to assume /etc/hosts file will be used

StackOverflow https://stackoverflow.com/questions/20062004

  •  31-07-2022
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Question

This may be a bit of an open ended question, and truth be told I would prefer an exhaustive list, however, this has been bugging me for a while: When is it ok for me to assume a program will use the hostnames specified in /etc/hosts?

Will any of these programs use it?

  • ssh (via ~/.ssh/config) YES
  • dhcp (via /etc/dhcp/dhcpd.conf) YES
  • iptables ?
Was it helpful?

Solution

Every program which needs to map between URL and IP address (gethostbyname and such) will use /etc/hosts and DNS. The order is configurable via nsswitch.conf.

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