[kcmac]

Don't want to have to select the sites that can be seen. Want to stop certain sites from being viewed. Specifically myspace and xanga.

How do I do this?

[Big Mac]

I know you can do it with the Hosts file, but there certainly should be a way to do it through Parental Controls as well. Alternatively, if you have a router you could disable the sites for everyone on your connection that way.

[kcmac]

Originally Posted by Big Mac

I know you can do it with the Hosts file, but there certainly should be a way to do it through Parental Controls as well. Alternatively, if you have a router you could disable the sites for everyone on your connection that way.

As far as I can tell, Parental controls makes you select the sites that can be viewed and place them in the bookmarks bar. This is much more restrictive than I want to be.

We use Airport Express for wirelessly connecting 3 computers in our home. (No machines directly attached.) Can it be done through AE?

Have tried to go into the terminal and to the localhost file.

Am not terminal literate but did get into the terminal and to this info:

127.0.0.1 localhost
255.255.xxx.xxx broadcasthost
::1 localhost

Then added to this info to get the following:

127.0.0.1 localhost www.myspace.com
255.255.xxx.xxx broadcasthost
::1 localhost

Should I really add the myspace.com stuff after the localhost line or should I add all the new lines to the top of the terminal window when it opens and simply add
127.0.0.1 myspace.com ?

(Also added the ipaddress for myspace in one attempt. The xxx is really a number obviously which you can probably guess.)

Found in another thread that you can keep adding domains/hosts and ip addresses after the localhost by just adding spaces between each new addition.

Don't know how to save this or get out of the terminal with it saved. When I try to save it, I get a dialog box that wants to save it, almost like an application. Is this correct?

[kcmac]

Found this.

Simple way to do it. Type into terminal

sudo nano -w /etc/hosts

In the /private/etc/hosts file, add the following lines

127.0.0.1 www.myspace.com
127.0.0.1 myspace.com

that will prevent access to the site by routing all requests back to the local machine.


and this

On the macintosh you can issue the following commands in a Terminal window:

route add 63.208.226.40/32 127.0.0.1
route add 63.208.226.41/32 127.0.0.1
route add 63.208.226.42/32 127.0.0.1
route add 63.208.226.43/32 127.0.0.1

OR, just in case they change their IP at some point in the future:

host www.myspace.com | awk '{ print $4 }' | xargs -R 1 -I % route add %/32 127.0.0.1

You could even put that one in cron, but append a ">> /dev/null 2&>1" at the end or your disk will fill up with cron email:
host www.myspace.com | awk '{ print $4 }' | xargs -R 1 -I % route add %/32 127.0.0.1 >> /dev/null 2&>1

(and when she's allowed back on:
host www.myspace.com | awk '{ print $4 }' | xargs -R 1 -I % route delete %/32 127.0.0.1
)

The bottom solution seems intense. Still don't know how to save and make these things stick.

[Big Mac]

You mean Hosts does not persist?

[kcmac]

Persist?

When I type in the info to the terminal dialogue window, it apparently needs to be saved. I don't know how to exit the Window otherwise. If I try to save it, it brings up a window that asks what you want to save the "file" as and where it should be saved to. Didn't do that part as I'm not sure what would happen here so the info I try to add doesn't persist as you call it.

Pardon my ignorance here. Most of it is more of a reluctance to do something that I am not sure of what the result would be. The terminal makes me a bit queezy.

[Artanis]

Originally Posted by kcmac

Don't want to have to select the sites that can be seen. Want to stop certain sites from being viewed. Specifically myspace and xanga.

How do I do this?

I think u need a script or something for safari that would restrict the navigation on these websites from the adress bar. I mean to set in the adress bar that if one of the key words u set in the script appears, than safari won't navigate to that website.
I think that something like this would prevent the use of some proxies also, because even if u use a proxy the adress appears in the address bar.

[badtz]

there's no GUI program that can implement this?

[Person Man]

Originally Posted by Big Mac

You mean Hosts does not persist?

Of course Hosts persists. Not if you do it from the command line, but you can edit the Hosts file directly. (I think Mac OS X does it a bit differently, but there is still a place you can edit to have persistent "hosts" settings)