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- Copy the test "hosts" file to the "etc" directory. To make sure it is working, issue the command "ping auth.yale.edu" and verify that the address being used is 128.36.64.90.
- Login to your application using the browser. If it works, the test is successful.
- Copy the original saved file to the "etc" directory.
There is no direct
What happens if you do not restore the original copy of the file? Unfortunately, there are a few other applications that you can access that appear to be on the "auth.yale.edu" server, but only Shibboleth (that is "https://auth.yale.edu/idp") is supported by the test machine at 128.36.64.90. So if you leave the test configuration, and then a few days later you use some application that was configured years ago to use a obscure alias of CAS as "https://auth.yale.edu/cas" then that CAS URL will not be found. So generally it is a good idea to run one quick test and put things back to normal.
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The hosts file has been in every system that uses the Internet. On Windows it goes back at least as far as the mid 1990's. What we are doing here was once very common.
Them Then malware came along, and today a lot of malware programs try, among other things, to change the hosts file. So this file is somewhat more carefully protected, and it is certainly regarded as evil for some program to try and change it behind your back. If you go to edit the file, and you did not make any intentional changes, and it is full of non-comment lines, then you may have been hacked.
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