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.
 | Warning |
|---|
| | 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.
|
 | Tip |
|---|
| | 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.
|
