How to edit /etc/hosts without sudo?

Question

I have a machine that I can only access using SSH.

I was messing with the hostnames, and now it says:

ssh: unable to resolve hostname

I know how to fix it in /etc/hosts.

Problem is, I need sudo to fix them because my normal account doesn't have permissions.

What's the best way to fix the hosts?

Instead of editing /etc/hosts, maybe http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/10438/can-i-create-a-user-specific-hosts-file-to-complement-etc-hosts would help? — jamesdlin, Apr 13 '14 at 08:54

score 4 · Answer 1 · answered Apr 13 '14 at 04:22

You need sudo or root privileges to edit the /etc/hosts file in your local host. If you don't, there is no way of editing this file.

Then you must add an entry to /etc/hosts so that your local host can resolve properly the hostname of the remote host.

This is the format of the lines in /etc/hosts

127.0.0.1   localhost.localdomain   localhost
10.10.2.9   remotehost.labs         remotehost

Avinash Raj · Accepted Answer · 2014-04-13T04:50:55.250

2

You don't need sudo to fix that, try pkexec,

pkexec nano /etc/hosts
pkexec nano /etc/hostname

After running pkexec nano /etc/hosts, add your new hostname in the line that starts with 127.0.1.1 like below,

127.0.0.1   localhost
127.0.1.1   your-hostname

And also don't forget to add your hostname inside /etc/hostname file after running pkexec nano /etc/hostname command,

your-hostname

Restart your PC. Now it works.

edited Apr 13 '14 at 04:50

answered Apr 13 '14 at 04:12

Avinash Raj

1

I'm a little confused. What exactly does pkexec do? Also when I ran it on the hosts file, it showed up with a blank doc. When I saved, did I overwrite what was there? – evamvid Apr 13 '14 at 04:16
pkexec allows an authorized user to execute PROGRAM as another user. If username is not specified, then the program will be executed as the administrative super user, root. – Avinash Raj Apr 13 '14 at 04:18
So it's like a backup/fake sudo? Awesome! – evamvid Apr 13 '14 at 04:19
And, I'm not sure why it showed blank, but it seems to have worked -- now I'm trying to fix the actual hosts problem – evamvid Apr 13 '14 at 04:19
Yes, try to fix that. You said "I know how to fix it in /etc/hosts and /etc/hostname" – Avinash Raj Apr 13 '14 at 04:20
I thought I did, but apparently I didn't =) – evamvid Apr 13 '14 at 04:23
Anyway, pkexec needs to authenticate the user to execute the command before running it – mavillan Apr 13 '14 at 04:39
bash: pkexec: command not found – Soldeplata Saketos Aug 21 '23 at 18:02

2 Answers2