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chungster Author

Level 1

5 points

What is the difference between private/etc/hosts and etc/hosts?

I was attempting to modify my iMac 'hosts' file in terminal and tried the usual sudo nano /private/etc/hosts. It would bring up an empty page. I thought the hosts file was simply empty. I added the entries I wanted to block and when I tried to exit and save (^o or ^x and choosing yes), i would get the error '/private/etc/hosts: No file exists' (or something to that effect).

After some researching, I tried using 'sudo nano /etc/hosts' and it brought up what looks like the hosts file (It has the same entries as I have on my MBP running the same OS when I sudo nano /private/etc/hosts)

Is there a difference in the file in /private/etc/hosts and /etc/hosts ?
Does that mean I have a problem with my iMacs' host file?

iMac, Mac OS X (10.6.8)

Posted on Feb 20, 2013 5:38 AM

20 replies

ds store

Level 7

30,825 points

Feb 21, 2013 11:27 AM in response to WZZZ

The cat is next to the Apple logo.

WZZZ

Level 6

13,232 points

Feb 20, 2013 6:59 AM in response to chungster

Don't undertstand that. /private/etc/hosts is the full path to /etc/hosts. What about just entering /private in Go to Folder, then hitting /etc and then scrolling to and opening /hosts?