Mountain Lion 10.8.2 (Hosts File Locked)

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Mountain Lion 10.8.2 (Hosts File Locked)

In OS X Lion 10.7, I had edited my Hosts File to prevent certain web-sites from loading and would like to access them again, however I have noticed that in the latest update of Mountain Lion 10.8.2 the "/private/etc/hosts" file is locked and cannot even be modified in terminal using vi, nano or pica. Does anyone know a way around this? I even tried logging into to the repair volume of OS X to try to no luck. Has anyone been successful?

iMac (21.5-inch Late 2009), OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.2)

Posted on Oct 24, 2012 9:03 PM

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2 Time Olympian Author

Level 1

69 points

Oct 24, 2012 10:50 PM in response to 2 Time Olympian

Okay, after a ton of researching terminal commands, I finally found the solution to my own question.

1) First you need to log-in as the Root User in Terminal using the following command:

sudo su -

2) Then you need to remove the "sticky" lock assigned to the hosts file that prevents people from modifying it:

chflags nouchg /private/etc/hosts

3) Then you can edit the hosts file as per usual via the following command:

sudo nano /private/etc/hosts

"Control O" to Save

"Control X" to Exit

4) Then in Mountain Lion you should flush your cache to ensure the new hosts file is current:

sudo killall -HUP mDNSResponder

5) Go ahead and reapply the "sticky" lock so the hosts file doesn't modify itself:

chflags uchg /private/etc/hosts

I hope this helps!

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