Does hosts file exist in iphone? How to change it?

Question

I am developing an application that query to the server. In my Mac, I use the hosts file to change the dns to point to a local server within my local area network.

Now I need to test it with my iphone, the problem is that my iphone does not recognize that server due to the missing configuration for dns.

Within my mac or windows, I simply add: 192.168.0.20 http://sunflowerapps.com

Now how to I let my iphone know http://sunflowerapps.com ?

Someone has experienced with it before, please help!

Answer 1

Not programming related, but I'll answer anyway. It's in /etc/hosts.

You can change it with a simple text editor such as nano.

(Obviously you would need a jailbroken iphone for this)

Answer 2

It might exist, but you cannot change it on a non-jailbreaked iPhone.

Assuming that your development webserver is on a Mac, why don't you simply use its Bonjour name (e.g. MyMac.local.) instead of myrealwebserverontheinternet.com?

Answer 3

No, an iPhone application can only change stuff within its own little sandbox. (And even there there are things that you can't change on the fly.)

Your best bet is probably to use the servers IP address rather than hostname. Slightly harder, but not that hard if you just need to resolve a single address, would be to put a DNS server on your Mac and configure your iPhone to use that.

Answer 4

This doesn't directly answer your question, but it does solve your problem...

What make of router do you have? Your router firmware may allow you to set DNS records for your local network. This is what I do with the Tomato firmware

Answer 5

Don't change the DNS on the phone. Instead, connect with wifi to the local network and you are all set.

At my office, we have internal servers with internal DNS that are not exposed to the Internet. I just connect with iPhone to the office wifi and can then access them fine.

YMMV, but instead of configuring the phone DNS, it feels to me that just setting up local internal DNS and wifi is a cleaner and easier solution.

Answer 6

I just edited my iPhone's 'hosts' file successfully (on Jailbroken iOS 4.0).

• Installed OpenSSH onto iPhone via Cydia
• Using a SFTP client like FileZilla on my computer, I connected to my iPhone
  • Address: [use your phone's IP address or hostname, eg. simophone.local]
  • Username: root
  • Password: alpine
• Located the /etc/hosts file
• Made a backup on my computer (in case I want to revert my changes later)
• Edited the hosts file in a decent text editor (such as Notepad++). See here for an explanation of the hosts file.
• Uploaded the changes, overwriting the hosts file on the iPhone

The phone does cache some webpages and DNS queries, so a reboot or clearing the cache may help. Hope that helps someone.

Simon.

Answer 7

@Simon I followed the same steps, but it didn't work. Then i tried to change encoding settings, and got it! You have to convert your host file to ANSI in Notepad++ before you save it. For whom failed to get the host file working; click "Convert to ANSI" under "Encoding" menu.