Why use hosts file?

Posted by dK3 on Server Fault See other posts from Server Fault or by dK3
Published on 2014-08-19T09:42:53Z Indexed on 2014/08/19 10:22 UTC
Read the original article Hit count: 201

Filed under:

hosts

My company has a staging site and we access it by a url like this: www.example.com

Until today I did not realise that I had a line in my hosts file which said:

192.0.2.0 www.example.com

(the ip is fake here)

now when I try to access this site through ip , I cannot get access.. why is this the case?

We even own the domain we are using so I do not see the reason why we are using a hosts file and more over, why I cannot access the site through simple IP (by the way, we are using an internal IP)

Related posts about hosts

Proxy settings: Allowed hosts instead of ignored hosts

as seen on Server Fault - Search for 'Server Fault'
I'm using Ubuntu, as many proxy applications, GNOME Network Proxy Preferences only allow to ignore hosts. What I want to do is exactly the opposite. I only want to use the proxy for few sites. Is it possible to define only the allowed hosts in any way? PS: I know FoxyProxy add-on for Firefox does… >>> More
Can't access network share with name defined in hosts file

as seen on Server Fault - Search for 'Server Fault'
I have a network share on a machine that I can only reach by IP address. I then defined an alias for the IP in my hosts file so I could use that instead of the IP but then I can't log on to the share, I just get the logon prompt again and again. So basically this: \\172.17.0.48\SomeShare works but… >>> More
hosts file ignored, how to troubleshoot?

as seen on Server Fault - Search for 'Server Fault'
The hosts file on Windows computers is used to bind certain name strings to specific IP addresses to override other name resolution methods. Often, one decides to change the hosts file, and discovers that the changes refuse to take effect, or that even old entries of the hosts file are ignored thereafter… >>> More
Uploading.to Uploads Files to Multiple File Hosts Simultaneously

as seen on How to geek - Search for 'How to geek'
If you’re looking to quickly share a file across a variety of file hosting services, Uploading.to makes it a cinch to share up to 10 files across 14 hosts. The upload process is simple. Visit Uploading.to, select your files, check the hosts you want to share the file across (by default all… >>> More
confusion about installing/using git; how to undo

as seen on Ask Ubuntu - Search for 'Ask Ubuntu'
I'm very new to ubuntu so I'm sure this is a dumb question. I wanted to install some source code that was on git. Don't really know what that means, I've never used git before, but I figured it was time to learn so I first installed git. Next I tried to clone the git directory of the software I… >>> More

Developer IT