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cwd
Asked: 2011-09-02 10:50:45 +0800 CST

Is it good to define localhost as 127.0.0.1 in your hosts file?

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I just came across a server that does not respond to things like ping localhost or mysql -h localhost - I believe this is because localhost is not defined in the hosts file.

On just about every machine I've used localhost has been an entry in the hosts file. Is there any good reasons not to define it - like possible security concerns? Or is this something that probably should be configured by default and perhaps is just missing?

ip configuration hosts localhost

2 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    Yes it's good. As you've already found out, there are certain programs (like mysql) that expect to be able to connect to localhost. Without that entry in your hosts file, programs cannot resolve that name to the proper IP address (in this case, the loopback address of 127.0.0.1).

    There may be different ways of resolving localhost sometimes, but really, why would you not want to put it in there? There is no good reason not to.

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  2. I believe it absolutely should be defined in the hosts file.

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