quick HOSTS file editing question

[Alex]

we're implementing a simple HOSTS-file based website blockign scheme here because way too many ppl are spending way too much time on orkut and other stupid sites instead of working...

so what we do for instance is:

127.0.0.1 www.orkut.com
127.0.0.1 www.uol.com.br
127.0.0.1 www.bol.uol.com.br
127.0.0.1 www.bol.com.br
127.0.0.1 email.uol.com.br
127.0.0.1 email.bol.com.br

now, is there any way to use wildcards or something and block EVERYTHING ending in 'uol.com.br' instead of having to add 'email.uol.com.br' and 'bol.uol.com.br' and variations thereof over and over?

thanks! 🙂

 

[Nohr]

The hosts file doesn't use any wildcards.

 

[rh71]

wait till they use the IPs of those unwanted sites instead 😉

 

[FoBoT]

Originally posted by: Nohr
The hosts file doesn't use any wildcards.

^^^
you would have to enter ALL of the fully qualified URL's

blocking isn't what the hosts file was designed to do, so using it in that fashion is very limited in use

 

[Joemonkey]

do it at your DNS server

 

[Alex]

crap... 🙁

i guess we'll just have a pretty long hosts file then 😛

 

[loic2003]

Block it server side, doing it on the individual machines is proper inefficient + crap.

 

[FoBoT]

yeah, there are much better ways to do it, block all with your firewall and use a tranparent proxy server so you can block sites and monitor bandwidth

 

[EyeMWing]

If you have ONE technically competant person on staff, they'll figure this out and it'll spread like wildfire.

 

[Alex]

Originally posted by: EyeMWing
If you have ONE technically competant person on staff, they'll figure this out and it'll spread like wildfire.

the ONE technically competent person is actually the one who asked me to do this... and he has NO clue... lol i guess you could say most ppl here are complete computer idiots! 😛

 

[EyeMWing]

Originally posted by: franguinho

Originally posted by: EyeMWing
If you have ONE technically competant person on staff, they'll figure this out and it'll spread like wildfire.

the ONE technically competent person is actually the one who asked me to do this... and he has NO clue... lol i guess you could say most ppl here are complete computer idiots! 😛

sh!t then, just unplug the friggin gateway. Nobody will notice 😛

 

[Alex]

Originally posted by: FoBoT
yeah, there are much better ways to do it, block all with your firewall and use a tranparent proxy server so you can block sites and monitor bandwidth

maybe sometime in the near future!
we don't really have much of a server goin on... just a wxp box that shares a DSL connection and acts as a fileserver... i did build an A64 box but until we setup the OS & software and decide whether we want a domain or not there isn't much i can do on the server side...