The Hosts tab allows you to add, edit,
or remove hosts from the /etc/hosts file.
This file contains IP addresses and their corresponding
hostnames.
When your system tries to resolve a hostname to an IP address or
tries to determine the hostname for an IP address, it refers to the
/etc/hosts file before using the name
servers (if you are using the default Red Hat Enterprise Linux
configuration). If the IP address is listed in the /etc/hosts file, the name servers are not used. If
your network contains computers whose IP addresses are not listed
in DNS, it is recommended that you add them to the /etc/hosts file.
To add an entry to the /etc/hosts
file, go to the Hosts tab, click the
New button on the toolbar, provide the
requested information, and click OK. Select
=>
or press [Ctrl]-[S] to save the changes to the /etc/hosts file. The network or network services do
not need to be restarted since the current version of the file is
referred to each time an address is resolved.
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Warning |
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Do not remove the localhost
entry. Even if the system does not have a network connection or
have a network connection running constantly, some programs need to
connect to the system via the localhost loopback interface.
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Tip |
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To change lookup order, edit the /etc/host.conf file. The line order hosts, bind specifies that /etc/hosts takes precedence over the name servers.
Changing the line to order bind, hosts
configures the system to resolve hostnames and IP addresses using
the name servers first. If the IP address cannot be resolved
through the name servers, the system then looks for the IP address
in the /etc/hosts file.
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