Xfce unable to lookup hostname

[Andrew Gould]

On Thu, May 7, 2009 at 7:26 PM, Daniel Underwood <djuatdelta at gmail.com>wrote:

> I added the line
>
> "127.0.0.1     bsdbox     bsdbox.my.domain"
>
> and now it works perfectly, thanks!
>
> Question: what does the line I added tell my computer? I.e., what does
> that line "do"?
>

The /etc/hosts file is used to map host names to IP addresses.  It is very
useful for assigning names to computers on your home network since those
computers are (probably) not mapped in a DNS system.

As you can see, an IP address, such as 127.0.0.1 (local host and bsdbox),
can be mapped to multiple names.

Andrew