Mac OS X Lion, /etc/hosts Bugs, and DNS Resolution

Wed, 27 Jul 2011 22:21:00 +0000

Final Update: I’m working on a follow-up post, but thanks to all the comments, it seems that somehow during the Snow Leopard to Lion upgrade, the /etc/hosts file was encoded incorrectly (likely the type of newlines used), and that Lion would fail to read it properly. Please try to copy the contents of the /etc/hosts file, recreate the file, and paste to fix your problem.

Update: I was still having problems with using .local for my development sites. After some extensive debugging and research I’ve found out some interesting things. It appears that Multicast DNS (mDNS), which is used in Apple’s Bonjuor for network discovery without a tradition DNS Server, has the Top Level Domain .local reserved for special mDNS functionality. Mac OS X will treat domains ending with .local differently! Use another TLD, like .dev, and it will work correctly.

Lion on Justin Carmony

Mac OS X Lion, /etc/hosts Bugs, and DNS Resolution