Copyright (c) 1983 Regents of the University of California.
All rights reserved. The Berkeley software License Agreement
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@(#)hosts.5 6.2 (Berkeley) 05/06/86

C 5 hosts - host name data base The hosts file contains information regarding the known hosts on the DARPA Internet. For each host a single line should be present with the following information:

10 official host name

.ns

10 Internet address

.ns

10 aliases

Items are separated by any number of blanks and/or tab characters. A ``#'' indicates the beginning of a comment; characters up to the end of the line are not interpreted by routines which search the file. This file is normally created from the official host data base maintained at the Network Information Control Center (NIC), though local changes may be required to bring it up to date regarding unofficial aliases and/or unknown hosts.

Network addresses are specified in the conventional ``.'' notation using the inet_addr() routine from the Internet address manipulation library, inet (3N). Host names may contain any printable character other than a field delimiter, newline, or comment character.

When using the name server this file is used as a backup for when named (8) is not running. For the name server it is suggested that only a few addresses be included in this file. These include address for the local interfaces that ifconfig (8C) needs at boot time and a few machines on the local network.

/etc/hosts gethostent(3N), ifconfig(8C), named(8), Name Server Operations Guide for BIND