I have been trying to setup hostnames in my userspace using HOSTFILE variable in bash-3.0-17 in SUSE10.0.

I have added the following entry in my .bashrc file
"export HOSTFILE=$HOME/.hosts"
and created file .hosts in my directory in same format as /etc/hosts

when I try to telnet, ptp, ping etc to the enteries I added in my .hosts file it returs error like "Name or service not known" or "unknown host"

I did exactly as bash manpages tells...I even tried doing similar excercise on FC3 machines but to no use...

any suggestions ??? or any other means to do so in some other shells??
I cannot edit /etc/hosts or DNS settings as I donot have administrator priveleges on the server.

Hi,

Im not too sure if 'HOSTFILE' is the right thing.

I have this impression that 'HOSTFILE' is used to
do hostnames completion.

eg. @abc follows by <TAB>
it will look in your HOSTFILE and do hostname completion.

sorry... not sure if its possible to bypass /etc/hosts
and have your own host file, specifically to yourself.
(not too sure why your site admin cant update /etc/hosts for u)