RE: Central HOSTS file?

["Paul Gordon" <paul@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Mark,

I do almost the same thing, - but I copy the hosts file to each machine
automatically via the logon script... (All my machines are in a domain)

Is that an option?

You *MAY* be able to modify the path windows uses to get the HOSTS file
by changing the following registry setting:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Parameters\Da
taBasePath

>From the default value of %SystemRoot%\System32\drivers\etc

To the path of your choosing, - I'd expect you'd have to make sure that
the other files normally found there are moved as well (the LMHOSTS,
SERVICES, and various others). Not sure how much it would like moving
this to a network location though, since I'm not sure at which stage in
the initialisation of Windows that it reads those files.. If Windows
wants them before the network stack is available for instance, then it
won't be able to get them....

Might be worth a punt though... If you try it, let me know how you get
on...


Paul G.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: ukha_d@xxxxxxx [mailto:ukha_d@xxxxxxx] On Behalf
Of
> Mark McCall
> Sent: 22 February 2007 12:57
> To: UKHA_D Group
> Subject: [ukha_d] Central HOSTS file?
>
> I want to control access to some sites on our home LAN.
>
> I can edit the HOSTS file on each individual machine, but is there a
way
> to
> hold a central HOSTS file on my server and point each machine to it?
>
> Thanks
>
> M.
>