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Accepted
Heisenberg
Asked: 2020-07-02 14:47:40 +0800 CST

How to redirect a URL to another URL using /etc/hosts

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I want to block some sites on my ubuntu system.So, I added some lines to the /etc/hosts, which are

127.0.1.1       www.reddit.com
127.0.1.1       www.facebook.com

This now successfully blocks the website but I want to redirect to another URL when I go to one of the URL I mentioned above, I found that you need to change the 127.0.1.1 to IP of website to make it work but I can't convert URL such as https://i.imgur.com/6FxzzCT.png to IP address.

It would be really helpful if someone can let be convert any URL to IP address.

networking server websites hosts

1 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    What you are trying to do is not possible. Well, at least not how you are trying to do it.

    In your desired URL (https://i.imgur.com/6FxzzCT.png), only this part has a specific IP address: i.imgur.com.

    $ dig +short i.imgur.com
151.101.16.193

    In a simplified form, when you enter that whole link in your browser (https://i.imgur.com/6FxzzCT.png). You are sending a request to 151.101.16.193 asking for 6FxzzCT.png file using HTTPS protocol.

    Using /etc/hosts you can only set predefined IP addresses per hosts but you can't handle HTTP requests.

    What you might be able to do is to run a simple HTTP server on localhost serving a picture or a random picture at index.html or whatever predefined default page. Then redirect every site you like to 127.0.0.1 using /etc/hosts. Now your page is waiting there to bring up some random picture.

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