Can the hosts file redirect an IP address? [closed]

Question

I have cloned a Windows 2003 machine and put it on the same domain as the original.

I want to make sure that the clone never accesses the original. I want it to think it is the original. I don't want to exhaustively check the clone for everything that might reference the name or IP address of the original and change to the name or IP address of the clone.

Will I get what I want if I add the following two lines to the hosts file on the clone?

127.0.0.1   originalname   #divert attempts to access the original machine
127.0.0.1   192.168.1.2    #divert attempts to access the original machine

originalname is the name of the original machine. 192.168.1.2 is the IP address of the original machine.

Answer 1

You first line should do the trick although you might want to add an additional short name to that entry.

Your second entry will never work. You can not redirect/mask an IP address with another IP address. The server should no longer think it should be resolved at 192.168.1.2 once you put the first line in place.

To be 100% sure you can always Flush the DNS cache for good measure. http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc782459(v=ws.10).aspx

This is worth reading and should explain the process of name resolution on Windows operating systems: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/172218.

Hosts files can not redirect IP addresses. They can only redirect names/hosts to resolve to a different IP address.