Dynamic subdomains with /etc/hosts

PhantomBeaker

Hi all,

For local development purposes I want to set up a fake domain on /etc/hosts, and preferably some subdomains.

I.e. if I setup beaker.test in /etc/hosts to point to 127.0.0.1 I'd also like a way to have it automatically redirect phantom.beaker.test and muppet.beaker.test and www.beaker.test to my machine. In fact, I want every subdomain of beaker.test to point to 127.0.0.1

Is this possible or do I have to do some funny things with a local dns server?

I'm running ubuntu, and this is the relavent extract from nsswitch.conf:

hosts:          files mdns4_minimal [NOTFOUND=return] dns mdns4

Thanks
Aoife

ntlbell

You can do it with the hosts file.

PhantomBeaker

Ok, cool. The next trick is how.

I've tried
127.0.0.1 beaker.test
and
127.0.0.1 *.beaker.test

If I try to go to notInHostFile.beaker.test I still don't connect to 127.0.0.1

So I'm probably missing something painfully obvious, but I can't find it in hosts(5) and I can't quite find the right term for google.

Thanks,
Aoife

ntlbell

sorry I missed the "dynamic" part my bad.

With /etc/hosts you will have to add each subdomain you want as a separate entity within the hosts file.

Sorry for the confusion.

or you could setup bind.