HP-UX Reference (11i v1 00/12) - 4 File Formats (vol 8)

ManualsBrandsHP ManualsSoftwareHP-UX Reference Manuals

141

142

143

144

145

146

147

148

149

150

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

STANDARD Printed by: Nora Chuang [nchuang] STANDARD

/build/1111/BRICK/man4/!!!intro.4

________________________________________________________________

___ ___

hosts(4) hosts(4)

NAME

hosts - host name data base

DESCRIPTION

The ﬁle /etc/hosts associates Internet (IP) addresses with ofﬁcial host names and aliases. This allows

a user to refer to a host by a symbolic name instead of an Internet address.

Note: This ﬁle must contain all addresses for local interfaces that ifconfig needs at boot time (see

ifconﬁg(1M)). When using the name server (see named(1M)), or Network Information Service (see

ypserv(1M)), this ﬁle often serves as a backup when the server is not running. In such circumstances, it is

a common practice for /etc/hosts to contain a few addresses of machines on the local network.

/etc/hosts should contain a single line for each host with the following information:

Aliases are other names by which a host is known. They can substitute for the ofﬁcial host name in most

commands. For example:

192.45.36.5 hpdxsg testhost

In this example, users can use remote login on hpdxsg by using the command:

rlogin testhost

instead of

rlogin hpdxsg

If your system is in a domain naming environment, an ofﬁcial host name consists of the full domain

extended host name. For example:

192.45.36.5 hpdxsg.xsg.hp.com hpdxsg testhost

A line cannot start with a blank (space or tab character). Items are separated by any number or combina-

tion of space or tab characters (blanks). A # character indicates the beginning of a comment. Characters

from the # to the end of the line are not interpreted by routines that search the ﬁle. Trailing blanks are

allowed at the end of a line.

For the Internet, this ﬁle is normally created from the ofﬁcial host database maintained at the Network

Information Control Center (NIC), although local changes may be required to bring it up to date with

respect to unofﬁcial aliases and/or unknown hosts.

Network addresses are speciﬁed in the conventional Internet dot notation using the

inet_addr() rou-

tine from the Internet address manipulation library (see inet(3N)). Host names can contain any printable

character other than a white space, newline, or comment character.

EXAMPLES

See

/etc/hosts.

AUTHOR

hosts was developed by the University of California, Berkeley.