localhost or LAN addresses in /etc/hosts

[Derek Broughton]

Chris G wrote:

> On Mon, Dec 15, 2008 at 02:44:28PM -0400, Derek Broughton wrote:

>> No, that's just the ONE place you have to do things.  In the time
>> you've been asking us how to do this with a piece of software that
>> you had to add to your system, I could have done the setup dozens of
>> times on a router.
>> 
> ... and, similarly, I could have done it by editing /etc/hosts.

If you _could_ you wouldn't have  been asking here. 

> Who says - I seem to have it working fine now using dnsmasq and simple
> names.  I just guessed that I *could* remove the entries I was
> originally asking about and it all works OK.  It's what dnsmasq is
> specifically designed to do as far as I understand it.

Except  that you have now broken your /etc/hosts.  Why do you think it 
is set up with your local host on the 127.*.*.* subnet?

> That's what my original question was about.  All I wanted to know was
> whether I could remove the local host name from the 127.0.0.1 and
> 127.0.1.1 entries and leave it against the 192.168.1.4 entry.  It
> turns out that I *can* do this and everything works well with dnsmasq.

Of course you _can_ do that - but now you can't address your machine 
except by going out over the network.
-- 
derek