[Scifience]

I know how to use the HOSTS file in Windows, but am not sure how to go about using it in Mac OS X to block access to a website.

If it can not be done, is there another way to block access to a specific website?

[Scarpa]

Seeing as the hosts file in Windows was picked up from BSD (as far as I can tell) you should have no problem using it with OS X. You may need to change some settings to make sure the system checks the file though, I remember in 10.1 I had to set something in netinfo.

[Kristoff]

Why not use ipfw?

Mr. Hammer, meet Mr. Nail.

[CatOne]

Originally posted by Kristoff:
Why not use ipfw?

Mr. Hammer, meet Mr. Nail.

Using the firewall to block a specific site? Methinks you have a hammer and think everything LOOKS like a nail ;-)

Anyway you can use the hosts file (it's located in /etc/hosts) to do this... just have an entry like this:

127.0.0.1 foo.com bar.foo.com

where the latter entry is the domain name of the site you want to block. Lookups for that site won't use DNS, so it won't properly resolve.

An alternative of course is to use a proxy server to do a real job of blocking the sites. That's more advanced, but more flexible too.

[poocat]

hi.

there are actually a good group of articles over here that detail specificly how to use host files in osx. the main one is listed as under review, which i assume means re-done for panther. hopefully it will be back online soon.

this is one of the first hacks i missed when i installed panther. always forget how many ads there are on the net.

if anyone else knows other sites detailing how to do this (it's pretty intimidating if you're non-unix aware initially) please toss up a link.

poocat.