[zanyterp]

i have searched and found some items similar, but nothing had the answer i am looking for: how do i save my edited hosts file? i'm running 10.4.3.

when i open /etc/hosts, with textedit or vi, it is opened as read-only and will not let me save it. i have set my permissions to 766 and 777, to make sure it is editable, but then i still cannot save my changes. in textedit when i save changes, i am told i can't save due to overwrite protection (i think that was the message) and when i choose to overwrite, it does not allow me to save. through vi, i get a message related to /private/etc/hosts.

do i need to change the permissions on /private/etc/hosts as well? or am i missing something very simple to let me save changes to /etc/hosts? i also tried to make the modification using NetInfo, and it does not save the change either.

thanks!

[Tesseract]

Are you editing as root? (sudo vi /etc/hosts)

[zanyterp]

Originally Posted by Tesseract

Are you editing as root? (sudo vi /etc/hosts)

i am. going in as root should protect from the overwrite protection, right?

[Tomchu]

If a file is r-xr--r-- root/root, and you are su'ed as root, then you can still write to it simply because you are *root*, even though you don't have the "official" write flag. In vi/vim, rather than doing :w to write the file out, do :w! and it will force an overwrite.

[zanyterp]

Originally Posted by Tomchu

If a file is r-xr--r-- root/root, and you are su'ed as root, then you can still write to it simply because you are *root*, even though you don't have the "official" write flag. In vi/vim, rather than doing :w to write the file out, do :w! and it will force an overwrite.

thx; i will give that a shot (using :w!). if i were to use 'wq!' it will not have the same effect as 'w!' right?

su and sudo will give me the same rights, right?

[zanyterp]

Originally Posted by Tomchu

If a file is r-xr--r-- root/root, and you are su'ed as root, then you can still write to it simply because you are *root*, even though you don't have the "official" write flag. In vi/vim, rather than doing :w to write the file out, do :w! and it will force an overwrite.

thx; i will give that a shot (using :w!). if i were to use 'wq!' it will not have the same effect as 'w!' right?

su and sudo will give me the same rights, right?

[Tesseract]

Originally Posted by zanyterp

thx; i will give that a shot (using :w!). if i were to use 'wq!' it will not have the same effect as 'w!' right?

:wq! is equivalent to :w! :q, IIRC.

Originally Posted by zanyterp

su and sudo will give me the same rights, right?

Generally, yes.

[zanyterp]

thanks Tesseract.

got it to work on 10.4. before posting this, i had searched for the same thing and found mentions of a work-around/trick that needs to be done in 10.3.x? is that right? is this documented somewhere (i looked and couldn't find it in the forum)

thx!