Why doesn’t your new host name in /etc/hosts take effect after a restart of Firefox or Safari like it does on Windows or Linux?

Lookupd.

Lookupd is caching your /etc/hosts file entries.

sudo lookupd -flushcache

Sorted.

This baffled me for a little while a couple of months ago.

So, next question: What is NetInfo Manager and why should you use it?

I don’t really know, but you can use it, rather than /etc/hosts, to configure hosts: Mac OS X: How to Add Hosts to Local Hosts File.

Just be aware that the search order for lookupd is DNS and then NI so if you’re configuring a host on a domain with a wildcard DNS match like *.gatezero.org it will appear to never work and drive you mildly crazy. At that point you’ll swear off GUIs for the rest of your life and go back to what you know works: vi and /etc/hosts, just don’t forget that handy flushcache command. You can change the lookupd configuration to alter the search order but that’s going to be your own private battle and I don’t want anything to do with it.

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 20th, 2007 at 8:57 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.