/etc/hosts
hosts5
Host and network name database
Overview
The hosts file associates names and IP addresses. Each line has the following format:
Internet address Host or network name 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.
The system configuration file resolv.conf(5) controls where host name information will be searched for. The mechanism provided permits the administrator to describe the databases to search; the databases currently known include DNS and the hosts database.
When using a name server, this file provides a backup when the name server is not running. For the name server, it is suggested that only a few addresses be included in this file. These include addresses for the local interfaces that ifconfig(8) needs at boot time and a few machines on the local network.
Internet addresses are specified using either dot notation (IPv4) or colon separated notation (IPv6) as described in inet_pton(3). Host names may contain any printable character other than a field delimiter, newline, or comment character.
The host "localhost" and all names underneath the localhost domain will always resolve to the loopback addresses 127.0.0.1 or ::1.
Files
Releases
61 releases since OpenBSD 2.1; the text changed 19 times.