new hosts file makes Yahoo messenger not work

[yeehaw]

I added a new hosts file from:
http://hosts-file.net/?s=Download
and now Yahoo messenger does not work.
I looked through the hosts file and there are many entries that
include "yahoo", but they are different variations of it, like
ads.yahoo.com etc.
There is a whole section in the hosts file called YAHOO SERVERS,
www.yahoo.com is listed, and sure enough I cannot go to yahoo, why
would they add that? I will remove that line, but I don't know exactly
what the messenger would be called on the list.

Near the top of the hosts file, I see this line;
# Trusted Hosts - Insert your trusted hosts with their correct IP
addresses below this line.
--I thought the purpose of a hosts file is for it to be a list of NON
trusted sites?
Thanks for any help on this problem!
Ramey

 

[Olivier]

Nope, the original purpose of the host file is to specify the address of the
hosts you trust and provide a name service without going out to the DNS.

Using the host file for filtering out the hosts you don't want is done by
giving a local non-existing address (127.0.0.1) to each host in the list
instead of giving its actual address.

 

[Jim]

I added a new hosts file from:
http://hosts-file.net/?s=Download
and now Yahoo messenger does not work.
I looked through the hosts file and there are many entries that
include "yahoo", but they are different variations of it, like
ads.yahoo.com etc.
There is a whole section in the hosts file called YAHOO SERVERS,
www.yahoo.com is listed, and sure enough I cannot go to yahoo, why
would they add that? I will remove that line, but I don't know exactly
what the messenger would be called on the list.

Near the top of the hosts file, I see this line;
# Trusted Hosts - Insert your trusted hosts with their correct IP
addresses below this line.
--I thought the purpose of a hosts file is for it to be a list of NON
trusted sites?
Thanks for any help on this problem!
Ramey

No, the original purpose of the HOSTS file is to list all of the IP sites.
After a short time such a simple method became impossible to manage. Hence
we now have routers, dns servers, and dhcp servers to supplement the HOSTS
file.
Jim

 

[yeehaw]

No, the original purpose of the HOSTS file is to list all of the IP sites.
After a short time such a simple method became impossible to manage. Hence
we now have routers, dns servers, and dhcp servers to supplement the HOSTS
file.
Jim- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

==============
Hmmmm, that doesn't make sense, when I downloaded a different HOSTS
file that did NOT list Yahoo, my Yahoo started to work. How can you
possibly lists all the site you trust and every site you might want to
visit in the future? I believe it's the oppsosite, I added my personal
website to the HOSTS file, then I could not open it.
Ramey

 

[Olivier]

As Jim and I tried to explain, the hosts file is part of the mechanism that
translates the host names into internet addresses. That's because we're
generally much better at names than we are at numbers. The dotted number
format is already an attempt at making the number more readable and
memorable. www.yahoo.com is a name for an IP address and that name must be
resolved into an address for you to be able to get there.

In the hosts file, all the sites that have the address 127.0.0.1 in front
are those that will be blocked because this address is a loopback address to
your own machine and the URL you are looking for doesn't exist there. For
instance if you have a line that says 127.0.0.1 www.yahoo.com in your host
file and you try to go to http://www.yahoo.com/stuff/index.htm then you
won't get anywhere unless I suppose you run a webserver on this machine and
you have an index.htm file in a folder named stuff in your htdocs folder.

Sites that you want to see should have their real address in the hosts file,
but remember that the first match stops the search so it's got to be there
before the entry with the 127.0.0.1 if one is present.

The hosts file is the first place the system will look to translate a host
name into an IP address. If the host is not in the hosts file then the
system will look elsewhere for a Domain Name Server that will provide the
translation. This is why you don't need to keep the list of all the sites
you want to visit in your hosts file.

It looks like you added your personal website to the hosts file either with
the 127.0.0.1 address or another incorrect address for it. Had you added it
with it's proper address it would have been accessible. The hosts file that
listed yahoo listed it with the 127.0.0.1 address - thus barring it. The
hosts file without it allows DNS to resolve the address.

To recap, the hosts file is neither one way or the other. It holds addresses
of hosts. If it holds invalid addresses for hosts they will not ba accessed
because your system will not go to the DNS to find the correct address. If
it holds proper addresses for hosts then they will be accessed even if these
hosts' addresses cannot be solved by the DNS.