hosts file and multiple sub-domains

Question

For local testing (and learning), I wish to use x.com host name instead of localhost. I changed my Windows XP host file to this -

127.0.0.1       x.com

Now http://x.com/ works beautifully but http://www.x.com doesn't. :(

What changes should I make so that www.x.com, sub1.x.com, sub2.x.com etc.. all work on local. WordpressMU will lets users create sub-domains dynamically.

I am basically trying to setup WordpressMU locally. I'm using Apache/2.2.4, PHP/5.2.4, and MySQL5.

Please help!

Answer 1

You can repeat the same IP address several times to redirect multiple host names. You have to list the full host names though -- you can't list domain names or wildcards and expect all hosts in that domain to redirect to the IP address.

127.0.0.1 x.com
127.0.0.1 www.x.com
127.0.0.1 sub1.x.com
127.0.0.1 sub2.x.com

Answer 2

You can also put all the host names for an IP address on the same line:

127.0.0.1 x.com www.x.com sub1.x.com sub2.x.com

If you have a lot of sub-names, it would certainly be easier with a wildcard but unfortunately this is not supported with the hosts file.

Alternatively you could download the trial version of Simple DNS Plus which you can use to run a local DNS server on your XP machine (make sure to setup TCP/IP to use 127.0.0.1 for DNS). This allows you to setup wildcard entries like *.x.com.

Answer 3

You should put localhost back, because there might be software that depends on that entry.