MacOS – Blocking a website

dnsgoogle-chromehostsmacos

I need to block a particular website on my Mac (OSX 10.11.1, El Capitan).
I have already made the changes to /etc/hosts but the website is still not blocked when testing from Chrome. I think this has to do with it being an HTTPS connection.

Procedure:

Using sudo nano /etc/hosts, I have modified the /etc/hosts file to add the following lines:
0.0.0.0 goodreads.com 0.0.0.0 176.32.103.85

I checked the changes with cat /etc/hosts. Then I flushed the DNS cache using sudo killall -HUP mDNSResponder and sudo dscacheutil -flushcache.
I then try to access the page from within Chrome and it succeeds. I have also rebooted the machine, but the connection still succeeds.

It seems that this should work. I have searched extensively, and this approach is the most recommended. What am I missing?

Best Answer

Please use the following hosts file entries:

##
# Host Database
#
# localhost is used to configure the loopback interface
# when the system is booting.  Do not change this entry.
##
127.0.0.1       localhost
127.0.0.1       goodreads.com www.goodreads.com www1.goodreads.com
255.255.255.255 broadcasthost
::1             localhost
fe80::1%lo0     localhost

To properly block websites with the hosts file you also have to include aliases like www, ww1, www1, mail etc.

Related Solutions

Using hosts file on Mac OS X Snow Leopard

A friend of mine provided the answer via email....

Almost.

The purpose of the hosts file is to serve as a local supplement to a dns lookup (on linux, you can actually specify whether it asks DNS or the file first). As such, it is only used to return IP addresses. You need to use this in combination with Apache VirtualHosts to make apache respond to a host using a specific directory.

So... you hosts file should look like

127.0.0.1 local.wys
127.0.0.1 local.les

Find your apache configuration directory. Under XAMPP this is c:\xampp\apache\conf (yours might be ‘conf.d’) In conf you’ll have a folder called ‘extra’ and it that a file called ‘http-vhosts.conf’. Open that file.

Make sure that the following line is uncommented

NameVirtualHost *:80

You’ll need a default entry, and then any specific ones for each hostname you want to use.

The default one...

<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerAdmin technical@satellite   
    DocumentRoot "c:/webroot"
    ErrorLog "logs/localhost-error.log"
    CustomLog "logs/localhost-access.log" combined
</VirtualHost>

The custom ones should look like this, replace ‘airbase.local’ with ‘local.wys’ and the value of document root to where you want it to start serving files from.

<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerName airbase.local
    ServerAdmin technical@satellite
    DocumentRoot "D:/webroot/airbase/magento"
    ErrorLog "logs/airbase-error.log"
    CustomLog "logs/airbase-access.log" combined
</VirtualHost>

Restart apache and it should all be working nicely!

MacOS – DNS not resolving on Mac OS X

It turns out the solution was to bounce mDNSResponder:

sudo launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.mDNSResponder.plist
sudo launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.mDNSResponder.plist

This was obtained by a different coworker from this Server Fault question.

OS X 10.10.0 – 10.10.3, Yosemite

Apparently, mDNSResponder doesn't exist in Yosemite (OS X 10.10). You can restart descoveryd instead to fix these issues.

sudo launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.discoveryd.plist
sudo launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.discoveryd.plist

OS X 10.10.4+, Yosemite

In OSX 10.10.4 the mDNSResponder has been reintroduced. So use the first one will work again.