I do a lot of my drupal site development on my mac using a stack. I have several subdomains for different variations of the site, etc. I'm trying to access these subdomains on other computers on our corporate network. I can access the default localhost configuration fine on other PC's (by simply navigating to my mac's IP), but not any of the subdomains (example testsite1.my.ip.address). I'm aware that I can edit the hosts file on the other PC's to trick it into connecting to the subdomain - however we have a LOT of computers, and I'm locked out of that directory most of the time. Is there any other way to connect to a localhost subdomain on my mac from another PC without editing the hosts file on that PC??
1 Answer
Using a name means you need working DNS somewhere. This is what editing the hosts file is doing it is spoofing DNS for you. You need to setup a DNS server somewhere that you can control or you get to muck with host files.
4 Comments
EJK
We host our live site on Rackspace, which has a "cloud dns" feature that allows us to enter dns records. Would we be able to use this? If so, what type of record would I add??? Currently, I have to add this to the hosts file: my.ip.address testsite1.localhost
Sean Perry
Unless my.ip.address is a real, internet accessible IP then no Rackspace won't be able to help you. 192.168.x.x or 10.x.x.x won't work in this case.
EJK
Yeah, the ip is pointing to my computers 10.x.x.x address. So writing the line in the other computers hosts file is the only way to direct them to a localhost subdomain then?
Sean Perry
No, but the other way requires installing and configuring a DNS server on your network that will handle the 10.x.x.x addresses. Then you need to setup all of the systems to look at that DNS server. Perhaps the machine that gives out DHCP addresses can help? If you hand configure the systems then you have to update their DNS config locally by hand.