How to add a Local Hosts Entry

Frequently during the development process you need the ability to reference an unregisted DNS name (i.e. ‘application.name.com’) prior to formal internal and/or external DNS registration or updates.  It is really pretty simple and only requires the additional of the name to IP mapping in the HOSTS file on the MOSS server(s) and each of the development machines.

The ‘hosts‘ file does not have a file extension and is typically located in ‘C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc‘ (assuming the default Windows installation location).

Step 1:  Open notepad (or your favorite text editor) either through the menu or by clicking Start-Run and typing notepad in the Run dialog.  Please note that in Windows 7, you must run notepad as an administrator in order to save the required changes.

Step 2:  Open the ‘hosts‘ file (which is typically located in ‘C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc’) and enter the IP address and the associated entry (i.e. 192.168.1.117  coolapp.mycompany.com).

Step 3:  Save the changes to the hosts file and then flush the DNS cache from the command-line using the ‘ipconfig /flushdns‘ command.

Note, in MOSS 2007, the host entry should correspond to the host header or alternate access mapping entry.