[Jericon]

I'm here at work... I work at a software company. the current software I am testing here is KwikTag (www.kwiktag.com) an internet based software. The only problem is, in order ot test the software in house, I must be able to set a host file that would contain the in house regression server IP addresses, and the hostmask that they would be.

I know that the TCP/IP control panel has an option to 'select a hosts file', but what format does this file have to be in? I tried the format that the windows machines use:

"xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx hostmask"

but that's not working.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[Paul Crawford]

Hi Jericon,

There's some detailed information on the format of the Hosts file at the end of Apple's TIL article Open Transport: TCP/IP Configuration. As noted in the article, the format is based on a subset of the DNS Master File Format which is described more formally in the official Request For Comments (RFC) 1035, Section 5 (starting on p. 32).

Per RFC 1035, note that the domain/host name usually precedes the IP address, not the other way around. (Actually, the order should be the same on Windows as well.) There's also usually a "type" code between the two items (e.g., A for 'Address').

Regards,

--Paul

[DocWest]

Here's a portion of my Hosts file.

It's just a simpletext document with the following format:

ak.cache.imgis.com A 127.0.0.1
ads25.focalink.com A 127.0.0.1
adforce.imgis.com A 127.0.0.1
view.avenuea.com A 127.0.0.1

etc...

(This host file I use for getting rid of banners in hotline)